THE  IRISH  HOME-RULE 
CONVENTION 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  •  BOSTON  •  CHICAGO  •  DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •  SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 


THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


THE  IRISH  HOME-RULE 
CONVENTION 


'THOUGHTS  FOR  A  CONVENTION' 

BY 

GEORGE  W.  RUSSELL  (A.  E.) 
'A  DEFENCE  OF  THE  CONVENTION' 

BY 

THE  RIGHT  HON. 
SIR  HORACE  PLUNKETT 

AN  AMERICAN  OPINION 

BY 

JOHN  QUINN 


{fan  fork 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1917 

All  rights  reserved 


BOSTON  CQUJMM  LIBRARY 
CHESTNUT  HILL,  MASS. 


Copyright,  1917, 
By  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published,  September,  1917. 


ft 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 


PAGE 


I    An  American's  War  Credo  .     .  3 

II    Sinn  Fein  and  the  Dublin  In- 
surrection   17 

III  An  English  View  of  the  Insur- 

rection and  Home  Rule    .  37 

IV  The  American  Point  of  View  .  52 
V    Some  Irish  Opinions  ....  59 

VI    George  W.  Russell  (A.  E.)  .     .  79 

VII    Sir  Horace  Plunkett   ...  90 

Thoughts  for  a  Convention  ...  97 

Note   156 

Addendum   157 

A  Defence  of  the  Convention     .    .  163 


AN  AMERICAN  OPINION 
By  John  Quinn 


THE  IRISH  HOME-RULE 
CONVENTION 


AN  AMERICAN  OPINION 
By  John  Quinn 

I 

an  American's  war  credo 

I AM  glad  to  be  one  of  a  few  million 
Americans  who  have  neither  changed 
their  views  nor  found  it  expedient  or  poli- 
tic, because  America  has  entered  the  war 
as  one  of  the  Allies,  to  change  their  views 
upon  the  war  or  its  cause  and  the  aims 
of  the  conspirators  who  began  it  or  of 
the  terms  upon  which  it  shall  end.  I 
have  said,  and  written  from  the  beginning 
of  the  war,  that  there  could  be  no  real 
peace  with  the  Germans  until  the  German 
philosophy,  the  German  doctrine,  the  Ger- 
3 


4    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

man  practice  and  the  German  religion  of 
might  above  right,  of  philosophized  butch- 
ery, of  the  belief  that  wars  pay,  was  not 
only  knocked  out  of  the  heads  of  the  Ger- 
man kaiser  and  the  German  general  staff 
and  the  German  war  party  conspirators, 
but  out  of  the  heads  of  the  German 
people  themselves.  Thanks  to  the  Eng- 
lish blockade  and  now  to  our  own  em- 
bargo the  pinch  of  hunger  is  being  felt 
in  Germany,  but  German  militarism  still 
flourishes  and  the  organized  butcheries 
continue  still.  Germany  has  always  be- 
lieved and  still  believes  in  brute  force. 
Now  that  her  plans  for  world  conquest  in 
this  war  have  miscarried,  she  is  beginning 
to  rely  upon  her  organization  for  peace 
to  get  her  own  terms.  Autocracy  can  not 
only  make  war  better  than  democracy 
but  it  hopes  to  make  peace  better  than 
democracy,  for  it  relies  upon  bribery 
and    the   purchase    and    corruption  of 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  5 

the  purchasable  and  corruptible  in  every 
country.  Germany  knows  that  in  these 
days  nations  fight  as  nations  and  that 
the  armies  on  the  fighting  lines  are  but 
the  advance  guards  of  the  greater  armies 
that  are  entire  nations.  She  had  so  or- 
ganized her  national  life  that  she  could 
militarize  all  her  resources  and  industries 
upon  a  moment's  notice.  She  knew, 
and  counted  upon  the  fact,  that  Eng- 
land and  France  and  Russia  could  not. 
But  now  France  and  England  and  Italy 
have  organized  themselves  militarily. 
The  United  States  is  organizing  herself 
militarily.  When  the  United  States  shall 
have  militarily  mobilized  not  merely  her 
fighting  men  but  her  vast  resources,  and 
shall  have  joined  with  France,  England, 
Italy  and  Russia  in  the  crusade  to  defeat 
German  militarism,  the  combination  will 
be  irresistible.  Germany  knows  this  well. 
Hence  her  feverish  desire  for  peace  now> 


6    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

while  she  still  has  the  war  map  to  point 
to  and  to  trade  upon. 

Germany  still  is  the  child  of  "  scientific 
barbarism.55  She  had  money,  but  the 
collapse  of  German  credit  is  now  evident 
to  impartial  economic  experts.  She  is 
striving  for  peace,  and  her  spies  and  pro- 
pagandists are  working  for  peace  in 
Russia  and  Scandinavia  and  Switzerland 
and  Holland  and  the  United  States,  with 
brazen  impertinence,  not  because  she  has 
suffered  a  change  of  heart,  not  because 
she  has  come  to  disbelieve  in  the  massacre 
of  women,  children  and  old  men,  not  be- 
cause she  has  sickened  of  burning  and  de- 
stroying towns  and  villages,  not  because 
she  has  developed  a  new  sense  of  justice 
and  national  honor,  but  because  the  ma- 
terial resources  and  the  military  organi- 
zation upon  which  she  relied  are  beginning 
to  wear.  The  signs  of  the  creaking  of 
the  machines  are  evident.    Her  rails  and 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  7 

rolling  stock  must  be  wearing  out,  the 
fuel  for  her  motors  and  submarines  run- 
ning low,  her  supply  of  nitrates  diminish- 
ing, her  stores  of  wheat,  copper,  nickle, 
cotton  and  rubber  going  down,  and  the 
stored-up  munitions,  provisions  and  army 
supplies  upon  which  she  relied  for  quick 
victory  becomng  exhausted.  It  is  written 
that  they  that  take  the  sword  shall  perish 
with  the  sword.  Germany  has  worshipped 
and  still  worships  brute  force  and  only  by 
the  force  of  the  great  democracies  of  the 
world  may  she  be  overcome. 

I  do  not  believe,  and  I  have  never  be- 
lieved, in  the  distinction  attempted  to  be 
made  between  the  German  people  and 
those  who  began  and  are  carrying  on  the 
war.  The  German  people,  as  well  as  the 
kaiser  and  his  fellow-conspirators,  be- 
lieved enthusiastically  in  war.  For  a 
hundred  years  wars  had  paid  Germany. 
This  war  has  been  popular  in  Germany 


8    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

It  has  been  carried  on  by  the  German 
people  with  all  the  zeal  and  ardour  of 
religious  fanatics.  Its  worst  infamies 
have  been  defended  and  justified  by  the 
German  people.  German  atrocities  in 
Belgium,  Austrian  atrocities  in  Serbia, 
the  Lusitania  infamy,  the  submarine  pi- 
racy, were  approved  by  the  German  people 
generally.  They  were  not  merely  ap- 
proved but  were  generally  applauded  and 
exulted  in  and  defended  by  the  German 
people,  by  the  press,  by  the  publicists,  by 
the  professors,  by  the  German  Catholics, 
by  the  Jews,  by  the  Socialists,  by  the  lead- 
ers of  all  parties,  by  the  great  associations 
and  corporations  and  by  the  whole  na- 
tion. Certain  German  Catholic  defenses 
both  in  Germany  and  the  United  States 
were  particularly  rancid  and  nauseating. 

The  world  has  not  forgotten  the  Ger- 
man cry  DeutschJand  iiber  Alles  or  the 
German  Hymn  of  Hate  which  was  sung 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  9 


and  rejoiced  in  by  men,  women  and  chil- 
dren all  over  Germany.  It  was  not  alone 
the  German  officers  or  the  general  staff 
who  were  guilty  of  the  revolting  and  bes- 
tial cruelties  and  destruction  in  Belgium 
and  France.  It  may  be  said  the  atroci- 
ties in  Belgium  have  ceased.  But  if  one 
wishes  to  know  whether  Germany  still  be- 
lieves in  frightfulness,  one  should  read  the 
pamphlet  just  published  entitled  Fright- 
fulness m  Retreat  (Hodder  &  Stoughton, 
London),  which  shows  in  seventy-six  pages 
what  the  German  soldiers  of  the  retreating 
army  in  France  have  done.  If  after  that, 
there  still  remains  any  doubt  in  the  mind  of 
a  candid  reader,  let  him  read  The  War  on 
Hospital  Ships,  from  the  narratives  of 
eye-witnesses,  and  the  verdict  on  the  Ger- 
man outrages  expressed  by  the  Interna- 
tional Red  Cross  Committee  in  Geneva,  a 
body  of  the  highest  standing  and  most 
scrupulous  impartiality,  addressed  to  the 


10    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


German  Government  January  29,  1917. 
The  deportation  and  forced  labour  of  the 
Belgian  civil  population,  the  systematic 
exhaustion  of  the  economic  resources  of 
occupied  Belgium,  the  extinction  of  Bel- 
gian competition  for  the  benefit  of  German 
industry,  and  the  many  and  unspeakable 
outrages  committed  by  Germans  in  occu- 
pied France  and  Belgium,  all  prove  that 
the  Germans  as  a  people  are  stained  with 
crime  and  infamy.  An  article  in  the 
Nineteenth  Century  for  August,  1917,  en- 
titled At  War  with  the  German  People,  by 
Brigadier-General  F.  G.  Stone,  C.  M.  G., 
demonstrates  the  utter  absurdity  of  the 
claim  that  the  Allies  have  no  quarrel  with 
the  German  people. 

Even  in  the  United  States,  representa- 
tive Germans  and  representative  German 
societies,  with  a  few  exceptions,  have 
never  openly  condemned  the  German 
atrocities  in  Belgium  or  the  Austrian 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  11 

atrocities  in  Serbia  or  the  Lusitania  in- 
famy or  the  innumerable  other  cases 
of  German  cruelty,  perfidy  and  culculated 
barbarity.  The  many  cowardly,  detesta- 
ble and  criminal  German  plots,  conspira- 
cies and  murderous  outrages  in  this  coun- 
try, both  before  and  since  the  United 
States  came  into  the  war,  have  not  been 
generally  condemned  or  disapproved  by 
representative  Germans  or  leading  German 
societies  in  this  country.  A  German  may 
boast  that  "  after  the  war  we  shall  organ- 
ize sympathy"  but  the  stain  will  endure. 

While  the  proof  sheets  of  this  book  were 
being  read  the  papers  had  long  cable  dis- 
patches regarding  the  reception  in  Ger- 
many of  the  President's  reply  to  the  Pope. 
The  Frankfurter  Zeitung  said :  "  To 
Wilson  the  Imperial  Government  is  the 
merciless  dictator  of  Germany  but  he  him- 
self has  to  add  that  our  nation  is  today  at 
one  with  its  Government  "    The  socialist 


12     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


paper  Vorwarts  said:  "The  German  people 
are  fightmg  this  most  terrible  of  battles 
not  for  the  rights  of  a  single  family  or  a 
certain  form  of  Government,  but  for  its 
own  existence.55  The  Frankfurter  Zeit- 
wng  is  also  quoted  as  saying :  M  In  all 
essential  points  the  German  people  is  one 
with  its  Government,  especially  in  the 
policy  that  directly  preceded  and  that  has 
been  followed  during  the  war." 

Something  must  have  gone  wrong  with 
the  German  Government's  bureau  of  news- 
control,  for  while  some  of  the  German  edi- 
torials claim  that  Germany  has  already 
reformed  itself,  others  claim  that  she  is 
still  to  be  reformed.  For  example,  the 
Vossische  Zeitung  says :  "  The  movement 
which  Germany  has  created  out  of  her 
very  innermost  is  a  genuine  movement  for 
liberty,  and  this  path  Germany  has  taken 
without  advice  from  her  foes  and  it  does 
not  lead  to  a  sham  democracy.    The  move- 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  13 


ment  respects  the  rights  of  a  nation  "  (for 
instance,  Belgium)  "  and  opposes  every 
oppression  of  a  people"  (that  is,  Bel- 
gium and  occupied  France  and  Serbia). 
"  This  movement  purposes  also,  by  virtue 
of  this  self-determination,  to  teach  nations 
to  further  neighbourly  interests"  (again 
Belgium,  occupied  France,  Serbia,  Ru- 
mania, Poland)  "  thus  producing  an  hon- 
est league  of  the  weaker  nations,  which  col- 
lectively will  be  strong  and  free  and  cap- 
able of  defending  themselves  "  (including 
of  course  Belgium,  occupied  France,  Ser- 
bia, Rumania  and  Poland).  "  This  is  the 
political  aim  which  Germany  has  in  view 
for  herself  and  the  European  continent, 
and  the  achievement  of  which  will  be  se- 
cured through  parliamentarization." 

But  according  to  Vorwarts,  the  ere- 
ation  and  birth  of  the  movement  has  not 
yet  taken  place.  Vorwarts  says :  "  The 
only  thing  lacking  is  a  Government  re- 


14*    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Contention 


sponsible  to  the  people's  representatives 
as  it  exists  in  all  other  countries  of  the 
world,"  and  "  the  German  people  are  more 
than  ripe  for  democratic  government." 

While  condemning  the  "  inconceivably 
foolish  proceedings  of  Zimmermann  and 
other  irritating  incidents  of  the  German- 
American  conflict,"  the  Munich  Post  says : 
"  Have  the  democratic  events  of  the  last 
month,  the  rising  of  a  new  free  and  demo- 
cratic Germany,  with  a  program  of  peace 
by  agreement  through  international  tri- 
bunals and  the  democratization  of  em- 
pires, completely  escaped  his  (Wilson's) 
notice?"  But  the  Vienna  Neue  Freie 
Presse  tops  them  all.  It  said :  "  Even  if 
it  were  assumed  that  Germany  had  striven 
after  world  domination,  no  one  will  under- 
stand why  the  slaughter  must  continue, 
despite  the  frustration  of  the  alleged  plan 
of  domination." 

There  are  possibly  some  criminals  in 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  15 


prison  as  equally  devoid  of  humour  as  they 
are  of  decency  and  honour,  who  would  not 
"  understand 99  after  they  have  been 
caught,  tried,  convicted  and  sent  to  prison, 
why  the  imprisonment  "  must  continue, 
despite  the  frustration  of  the  alleged 
plan  n  of  the  criminal. 

The  German  sense  of  justice  is  shown 
by  this  paper's  allusion  to  such  things  as 
the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania,  conspiracies 
to  murder  our  citizens  and  to  destroy 
property  in  the  United  States  organized 
by  German  officers  and  agents  and  paid 
for  by  German  money,  the  grotesque  blun- 
dering of  the  German  foreign  office  over 
Mexico  and  Japan,  the  slaughter  of 
Americans  on  the  high  seas  and  such 
things  as  the  cowardly  murder  by  a  Ger- 
man submarine  of  the  sailors  taken  from 
the  Belgian  Prince,  as  "  irritating  inci- 
dents." International  murder  conspir- 
acies seem  to  these  Germans  to  be  "  mere 


16    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

incidents."  This  leads  one  to  wonder  how 
many  of  those  on  the  ship  that,  under  safe 
conduct  from  Great  Britain,  carried  the 
honourable  and  truthful  Bernstorff  and  his 
official  and  unofficial  German  aides  and 
agents  back  to  Germany,  were,  from  Bern- 
storff down,  morally  and  legally  guilty  of 
wholesale  murder  or  conspiracy  to  murder 
or  to  destroy  property  or  to  incite  strikes 
or  to  promote  the  cowardly  crime  of  arson 
in  the  United  States,  While  the  scrupu- 
lous and  truthful  Bernstorff  and  his  out- 
law crew  have  gone,  conspiracies  and  plot- 
tings  continue  still. 

This  may  all  seem  a  long,  long  way  from 
Tipperary,  but  I  have  stated  my  war  credo 
briefly  because  it  shows  the  point  of  view 
from  which  I  consider  political  and  inter- 
national questions  other  than  the  one 
great  question,  the  successful  conduct  of 
the  war  and  the  making  of  a  peace  that 
means  the  end  of  German  militarism. 


II 


SINN  FEIN  AND  THE  DUBLIN 
INSURRECTION 


HATEVER  my  interest  in  Irish 
affairs   and  in  the  home  rule 


question  before  the  war,  when  the  war 
broke  out  I  felt  that  if  Germany  should 
win,  home  rule  and  all  similar  questions 
would  become  minor  ones,  that  the 
Irish  and  everybody  else  would  be  subject 
to  Prussian  sabres,  and  that  it  was  the 
duty  of  all  to  defeat  the  Germans  first. 

While  the  coming  in  of  the  United 
States  was  an  enormous  gain  for  the 
western  powers  and  will  ultimately  settle 
the  contest  by  the  defeat  of  Germany,  it 
seemed  to  me,  before  the  President's  great 
message  in  answer  to  the  Pope's  peace 
17 


18    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

proposals,  that  there  was  a  certain  un- 
reality in  the  motives  as  set  forth  in  many 
of  our  speeches.  The  English,  French, 
Italian  and  Russian  soldiers  were  not  fight- 
ing for  democracy  or  any  other  cracy  or 
for  mere  humanitarian  or  pacifist  ideals. 
They  were  fighting  for  life  first ;  for  free- 
dom of  thought  and  development  in  what- 
ever form,  next;  for  the  old,  old  watch- 
words of  freedom  and  liberty,  in  fact.  It 
is  curious  that  those  who  blamed  di- 
plomacy for  not  preventing  the  war,  now 
seem  to  look  to  diplomacy,  to  negotiations, 
to  the  presentation  of  the  various  coun- 
tries' "  cases  n  as  a  means  of  forcing  peace. 
Diplomacy  can  no  more  always  prevent 
wars  than  disinfection  and  sanitation  can 
always  prevent  epidemics.  But  that  is  no 
valid  argument  against  either  diplomacy 
or  sanitation.  The  mistake  is  to  rely 
solely  upon  diplomacy  to  restore  peace 
where  diplomacy  failed  to  prevent  war. 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  19 

Peace  should  come,  when  it  does  come,  only 
from  the  surrender  of  Germany.  Whether 
it  will  be  because  of  military  defeat,  or 
financial  collapse,  or  exhaustion  of  mili- 
tary supplies,  or  of  starvation,  or  all  of 
these  things,  does  not  affect  the  point. 
Arugment  is  wasted  on  a  people  who  have 
been  taught  to  believe  in  and  who  worship 
"  blood  and  iron." 

The  armies  had  and  have  no  doubt 
about  it.  They  care  nothing  for  political 
formulas  and  for  academic  distinctions  be- 
tween nations  and  governments,  which 
they  looked  and  look  upon  either  as  mere 
rhetoric  or  as  diplomatic  suggestions  to 
the  German  people  to  revolutionize  their 
own  government.  Therefore  I  put  the 
winning  of  the  war  above  any  Irish  or  any 
other  political  questions. 

The  Sinn  Fevners  seem  to  me  to  put 
the  home  rule  and  other  Irish  questions 
above  the  winning  of  the  war.  Cardinal 


20    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


Newman,  emphasizing  the  importance  of 
clear  definitions,  once  wrote  that  if  peo- 
ple would  define  the  meaning  of  the  words 
or  terms  used  by  them  or  of  the  positions 
taken  by  them,  they  would  generally  find 
that  argument  was  either  superfluous  or 
useless ;  that  they  were  in  fundamentals 
either  so  close  together  that  argument  was 
unnecessary  or  so  wide  apart  that  argu- 
ment was  useless.  The  Sinn  Feiners  and 
ultra-Nationalists  seem  to  place  Irish  in- 
terests and  Irish  ideals  first.  That  is  one 
point  of  view.  While  I  think  it  is  a  mis- 
taken one,  it  is  intelligible  and  logical. 
The  world  owes  Belgium  a  debt  of  eternal 
honour  and  gratitude  that  she  did  not  take 
that  attitude  when  her  hour  of  trial  came. 
And  France  and  the  cause  of  liberty  owe 
great  Britain  an  eternal  debt  of  gratitude 
that  she  promptly  came  to  the  side  of 
France  and  Belgium  when  the  awful  de- 
cision of  war  for  the  right,  or  neutrality 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  21 

for  safety  or  profit,  had  to  be  made. 
With  Germany  the  victor  in  this  war  the 
Irish  in  Ireland  after  six  months'  expe- 
rience with  the  Germans  would  look  back 
to  the  conditions  in  Ireland  before  the  war 
as  heaven  itself. 

If  any  Irishman  who  thinks,  thinks  that 
a  German  victory  would  help  Ireland  to- 
ward either  self-government  or  independ- 
ence, he  might  have  his  thought  shaken  by 
reading  an  amusing  little  book  entitled 
The  Germans  in  Cork,  being  the  letters  of 
His  Excellency,  the  Baron  von  Kartoffel 
(Military  Governor  of  Cork  in  the  year 
1918)  and  others,  published  very  recently 
iii  Dublin  (The  Talbot  Press,  Ltd.). 
That  little  book  shows  that  under  Ger-» 
man  rule  the  Sinn  Feiners  are  pro-Eng- 
lish, that  among  other  things  Germany 
has  confiscated  all  the  money  in  the  Irish 
savings  banks  and  with  that  great  fund 
is  building  barracks  and  concert  halls  and 


22    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

coffee  palaces  to  replace  the  public  houses  ; 
that  all  men  in  Ireland  between  the  ages 
of  17  and  35  are  made  to  join  the  new 
army  which,  as  a  precautionary  measure, 
is  trained  in  Germany;  strikes  are  pun- 
ished by  deportation  to  Berlin,  and  it  is 
of  course  w  verboten 99  to  use  the  Irish 
language.  It  is  dead.  The  Sinn  Fevners 
who  were  caught  plotting  against  Ger- 
many were,  as  a  precautionary  measure, 
sent  as  exiles  to  the  shores  of  the  Baltic. 
His  Excellency,  Baron  von  Kartoffel, 
writes  to  his  brother  in  Berlin  complaining 
that  under  the  English  rule  the  Irish  chil- 
dren's minds  had  been  poisoned,  warped 
and  stunted,  and  claims  that  they  ought 
to  have  been  taught  that  "  a  certain 
amount  of  adversity  is  absolutely  neces- 
sary to  the  growth  of  nations."  Gov- 
ernor General  Baron  von  Kartoffel  visits 
the  Cork  slums,  is  depressed  by  what  he 
sees  there,  thinks  it  over,  and  has  the  in- 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  23 


mates  of  the  lunatic  asylum  "  gassed,"  the 
remains  cremated,  clean  sheets  put  on  the 
beds  and  the  slum  population,  escorted  by 
soldiers,  moved  in.  Strangely  enough 
they  showed  no  gratitude.  The  picture  of 
Prussianizing  Ireland  is  an  amusing  one. 
But  I  would  not  have  it  believed  that  hot- 
headed Svrm  Feiners  or  a  few  irreconcilable 
Irishmen  in  America  represent  the  general 
Irish  feeling  in  this  war. 

The  war  made  the  contest  over  the  prin- 
ciple that  no  nation  has  any  longer  the 
right  to  make  a  war  of  offence  against 
any  other  nation  the  greatest  contest 
that  the  modern  world  has  known,  the 
most  fateful  contest  of  modern  times. 
In  the  light  of  that  great  principle, 
there  is  not  much  difference  between  the 
pacifists  and  some  Smn  Feiners.  The 
pacifist  ignores  plain  facts;  the  extreme 
Sinn  Femer  lacks  a  sense  of  proportion. 
The  pacifist  ignores  the  fact  that  weakness 


24     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


in  defence  of  the  world's  peace  or  reliance 
upon  words  as  a  defence  against  brutes 
who  rely  upon  brute  strength  is  ignomin- 
ious and  stupid  where  it  is  not  cowardly 
or  pro-German.  Pragmatically  consid- 
ered, judged  by  results,  there  is  not  much 
to  choose  between  the  pacifist  and  the  pro- 
German.  Each  one  wants  immediate 
peace.  As  Germany  wants  immediate 
peace,  the  pacifist  and  the  pro-German  are 
playing  Germany's  game.  Pragmatically 
considered,  pacifist  agitation  and  pro-Ger- 
man propaganda  are  approved  by  Ger- 
many as  good  because  they  advance  Ger- 
many's interest.  But  while  the  effects 
of  pacifism  and  pro-Germanism  are  sim- 
ilar, there  is  all  the  difference  in  the  world 
between  the  motives  of  the  extreme 
Sirm  Feiners,  who  love  Ireland  and  do 
not  care  anything  about  Germany,  and 
the  motives  of  the  bribed  pro-Germans 
who  are  really  traitors  to  whatever  coun- 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  25 


try  they  are  in.  Until  the  German  con- 
spirators who  have  brought  the  misery  of 
this  war  upon  the  world  are  defeated,  and 
until  the  German  people  who  have  carried 
out  the  abominable  and  infamous  slaugh- 
ter-program of  German  autocrats  are 
brought  to  realize  that  war  does  not  pay, 
questions  like  home  rule  and  the  suffrage 
and  other  political  and  economic  questions 
are  comparative  irrelevancies.  Therefore 
I  think  of  home  rule  chiefly  as  a  step  in  the 
winning  of  the  war. 

The  Dublin  insurrection  of  May,  1916, 
was  not  generally  popular  in  Ireland.  If 
its  leaders  had  been  put  in  prison  for  the 
period  of  the  war,  the  Sinn  Fein  move- 
ment, so  far  as  it  was  merely  revolution- 
ary and  not  constructive,  would,  as  a 
formidable  movement,  have  ended  a  year 
ago.  Because  of  the  temperamental  inca- 
pacity which  unfortunately  included  com- 
plete lack  of  vision  which  characterized 


26    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


the  government  that  executed  those  sixteen 
men,  after  secret  trials  of  small  groups 
with  many  days'  intervals  between  each 
trial,  and  their  folly  in  arresting  several 
thousand  obviously  innocent  men  in  vari- 
ous parts  of  Ireland  and  deporting  them 
to  England,  deep  resentment  at  the  Eng- 
lish Government  spread  through  Ireland; 
the  leaders  of  the  insurrection  came  to  be 
thought  of  as  martyrs;  and  what  would 
have  been  regarded  as  a  generally  accept- 
able solution  of  the  home  rule  question  a 
year  ago  has  now  become  simply  impos- 
sible. 

From  the  Irish  point  of  view,  as  dis- 
tinct from  what  I  term  the  international 
view,  the  British  Government  in  executing 
these  sixteen  leaders  and  putting  their 
names  on  the  roll  of  martyrdom  has  not 
injured  the  cause  of  home  rule,  while  the 
men  themselves  by  their  ideality  and  death 
have  enormously  advanced  it.    Because  of 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  27 

it  the  national  education  of  Ireland  has 
gone  on  much  faster  and  much  further. 
What  the  British  cabinet  did  not  realize 
is  the  strain  of  ideality  among  the  Irish 
people.  It  was  still  there,  and  so  there 
was  an  outbreak  like  the  Irish  rebellion, 
which  would  have  been  impossible  in  Eng- 
land, and  yet  quite  possible  in  France  or 
Italy.  Those  leaders,  full  of  enthusiasm 
about  a  something  quite  indefinable  which 
they  called  "  the  Irish  republic,"  made 
their  appeal  to  the  Irish  enthusiasm  for 
the  ideal  and  the  beautiful.  Now  they  are 
dead,  the  appeal  goes  on  all  the  more. 
But  those  leaders  should  be  distinguished 
sharply  from  the  very  few  pro-German 
Irish  and  from  the  ordinary  ruck  of  poli- 
ticians, past,  present  and  to  come,  who 
think  that  hatred  of  England  is  states- 
manship, and  who  have  the  one  vulgarity 
in  common,  a  belief  in  Irish  hatred  of  the 
English  and  in  English  hatred  of  the  Irish. 


28    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

The  English  people  do  not  hate  the  Irish. 
As  a  rule  the  English  admire  the  Irish 
tremendously,  though  at  times  their  ad- 
miration is  mixed  with  apprehension  or 
misgiving,  not  merely  of  the  Irishman's 
intellect  and  brilliancy,  but  of  his  keen 
common  sense  and  practical  wisdom  and 
the  dramatic  expression  of  Irish  tempera- 
ment. A  muddling  nation  trying  to 
govern  one  of  the  cleverest  nations  in  the 
world.  But  it  should  not  be  forgotten 
that  the  Ulster  business  was  never  popu- 
lar or  widely  approved  in  England. 

From  a  Nationalist  point  of  view,  the 
Irish  rebellion  and  the  fate  of  its  leaders 
have  made  the  world  richer.  But  I  can- 
not forgive  the  government's  lack  of  vision 
and  the  stupidity  of  that  general  who 
sent  those  idealists  to  their  fate.  Many 
in  Ireland  have  come  to  feel  that  these 
Irish  poets  and  teachers  and  writers  were 
right,  and  no  one  can  deny  that  they  made 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  29 

a  world-shaking  event.  All  the  actors  in 
the  tragedy,  including  the  military  execu- 
tioners, played  their  parts  admirably. 
Nothing  was  wanting.  It  was  curious 
and  tragic  how  those  in  power  unwittingly 
played  up.  The  uprising  was  a  wild 
thought,  and  it  was  a  time  in  Ireland  for 
wild  thoughts.  The  executions  were  the 
only  things  wanting  to  make  it  a  great 
and  monumental  event  in  Irish  history. 
The  folly  of  poets  is  sometimes  wisdom, 
and  the  death-verdicts  of  the  courts-mar- 
tial and  the  wisdom  of  the  English  states- 
men who  approved  the  verdicts  were  alto- 
gether folly.  What  was  a  problem  in- 
volving the  highest  statesmanship  was 
handed  over  to  soldiers. 

Mr.  Asquith  must  have  been,  and  in- 
deed was,  profoundly  shocked  not  merely 
by  the  horrors  of  the  insurrection,  but 
by  the  very  fact  of  the  insurrection.  The 
pity  was  that  he  did  not  follow  the  ad- 


30     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


vice  of  those  who  urged  amnesty  and  con- 
cord. He  candidly  admitted  that  the  old 
system  of  Irish  government  was  no  longer 
possible.  But  he  followed  the  advice  of 
"  the  men  of  profound  wisdom  and  strong 
will  "  who  "  urged  that  crime  is  no  less 
punishable  because  it  amounts  to  trea- 
son 99  and  that  the  leaders  must  be  exe- 
cuted before  grievances  were  to  be  re- 
moved. The  Government  were  to  knock 
the  Skin  Fevners  down  with  one  hand  and 
then  pick  them  up  with  the  other.  Lin- 
coln would  not  have  followed  that  coun- 
sel. He  did  not  follow  it.  We  almost 
knew  the  very  tone  of  the  order  he  would 
have  sent  disapproving  the  death-sen- 
tences of  the  courts  martial.  Unfortu- 
nately the  golden  moment  for  reconcilia- 
tion passed,  and  it  has  taken  over  a  year 
for  the  real  work  of  conciliation,  by  the 
convention,  to  be  begun.  The  executions 
profoundly  shocked  England.    They  were 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  31 


so  out  of  date.  Englishmen  generally 
regretted  them  at  the  time  and  felt  that 
the  leaders  had  been  treated  with  unneces- 
sary harshness.  I  have  no  doubt  that 
Mr.  Asquith  has  since  sincerely  regretted 
the  extreme  measures  taken. 

So  the  uprising  was  an  Irish  event,  al- 
most the  greatest  in  Irish  history.  Cir- 
cumstances made  the  stage  a  great  stage, 
with  the  whole  world  for  spectators.  The 
tragedy  shocked  the  Irish  public  mind  and 
at  the  same  time  healed  the  Irish  amour 
propre  of  its  cherished  wounds.  Since 
the  uprising  they  can  say  "  We  have 
done  it,"  and  no  one  may  gainsay  them. 
They  gained  in  their  own  consciousness 
and  in  every  one  else's.  After  that  it  was 
inevitable  that  sooner  or  later  Sir  Edward 
Carson  and  his  followers  both  in  England 
and  Ireland  should  fall  into  line  and  the 
union  of  the  North  and  South  be  accom- 
plished; inevitable  that  Ireland  and  not 


32    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

England  should  decide  what  sort  of  home 
rule  would  content  Ireland.  Between 
Ulster  Unionists  and  the  rest  of  Ireland 
there  has  always  been  a  kind  of  sympathy, 
for  both  are  men  of  war  and  both  are 
rebels.  There  is  no  pacifism  about  them, 
and  both  are  Irish  in  their  feeling  about 
England  and  Ireland.  The  old  Fenian 
leader,  John  O'Leary,  always  said  this. 
O'Leary  called  the  Ulstermen  patriots 
who  wanted  Ireland  for  themselves.  Their 
anti-Popery  he  regarded  as  a  passing 
aberration. 

Ireland  is  the  scene  of  Germany's  one 
and  only  bloodless  victory.  Perhaps  fifty 
thousand  British  soldiers  locked  up  in  Ire- 
land; recruiting  there  almost  at  a  stand- 
still because  of  the  history  of  the  last 
year,  involving  a  loss  to  the  British  army 
of  perhaps  another  fifty  thousand  men, 
making  a  total  loss  of  one  hundred  thou- 
sand from  the  firing  line;  the  checking 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  33 


of  enlistment  in  Canada,  and  the  contribu- 
tion to  the  defeat  of  conscription  in  Aus- 
tralia —  these  constitute  a  German  victory 
without  the  firing  of  a  German  gun 
or  the  loss  of  a  German  soldier.  England 
is  paying  too  costly  a  price  for  her  past 
bungling  in  Ireland. 

But  I  do  not  wish  to  imply  that  Ireland 
as  a  whole  has  been  disloyal  in  the  war. 
From  the  outbreak  of  the  war  until  May, 
1916,  Ireland  gave  unmistakable  signs  of 
meeting  England  more  than  halfway. 
When  the  war  broke  out  England  ap- 
pealed to  Ireland  and  Ireland  responded 
generously  to  the  appeal.  The  two  na- 
tions went  to  war  together.  But  unfortu- 
nately for  England,  as  well  as  for  Ire- 
land, Ireland's  efforts  have  not  yet  se- 
cured that  measure  of  generous  response 
to  which  she  felt  she  was  entitled. 

Before  all  the  executions  had  been  fin- 
ished, Mr.  Asquith  hurried  over  to  Dublin 


34    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


and  in  the  House  of  Commons  on  the  25th 
of  May,  1916,  Mr.  Asquith  said: 

"  Two  main  dominant  impressions  .  .  . 
were  left  on  my  mind.  The  first  was  the 
breakdown  of  the  existing  machinery  of 
Irish  Government;  and  the  next  was  the 
strength  and  depth,  and  I  might  almost 
say,  I  think  without  exaggeration,  the 
universality,  of  the  feeling  in  Ireland  that 
we  have  now  a  unique  opportunity  for  a 
new  departure  for  the  settlement  of  out- 
standing problems,  and  for  a  joint  and 
combined  effort  to  obtain  agreement  as  to 
the  way  in  which  the  Government  of  Ire- 
land is  for  the  future  to  be  carried  on. 
As  I  said,  and  I  repeat,  the  moment  is 
felt  in  Ireland  to  be  peculiarly  opportune, 
and  one  great  reason  that  has  led  to  that 
opinion  both  there  and  here  is  our  expe- 
rience in  the  War.  Irishmen  of  all  creeds 
and  classes,  north,  south,  east  and  west, 
have  responded  with  alacrity  and  with  self- 
devotion  to  the  demands  of  the  cause 
which  appeals  to  them.  They  have  shed, 
they  are  shedding  today,  their  blood ;  giv- 
ing the  best  of  all  they  had,  sacrificing 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  35 

what  they  prized  most,  without  stint  and 
without  reserve,  in  the  trenches  and  on  the 
battlefields,  which  will  be  forever  conse- 
crated to  the  memory  of  Ireland,  as  of 
Great  Britain  and  of  the  Empire  at  large. 
Sir,  can  we  who  represent  Great  Britain, 
can  they  who  represent  Ireland,  tolerate 
the  prospect  that  when  this  war  is  over, 
when  we  have  by  our  joint  efforts  and 
sacrifices,  as  we  hope  and  believe  we  shall, 
achieved  our  end,  here  at  home  Irishmen 
should  be  arrayed  against  one  another  in 
the  most  tragic  and  the  most  debasing  of 
all  conflicts  —  internecine  domestic  strife? 
I  say  to  the  House  of  Commons  and  to  the 
country  and  to  the  Empire  that  the 
thought  is  inconceivable.  That  can  never 
be.  It  would  be  a  confession  of  bank^ 
ruptcy,  not  only  of  statesmanship,  but  of 
patriotism." 

Mr.  Lloyd  George,  then  a  member  of 
the  Government  under  Mr.  Asquith,  later 
undertook  to  obtain  an  agreement  between 
Ulster  and  the  rest  of  Ireland.  Although 
both  Sir  Edward  Carson  and  Mr.  John 
Redmond  each  made  sacrifices,  the  settle- 


36    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


ment  agreed  upon,  fortunately  for  Ireland 
as  well  as  for  England,  for  it  was  not  sat- 
isfactory and  would  not  have  been  a  per- 
manent one,  was  thrown  over  by  the  Gov- 
ernment upon  the  demand  of  certain  well 
known  forces  then  dominant  in  the  Cab- 
inet. That  surrender  of  Mr.  Asquith  and 
his  associates  was,  as  it  has  turned  out,  a 
fortunate  thing  for  Ireland  and  the  Em- 
pire, for  the  patched-up  settlement  satis- 
fied no  party.  It  would  not  have  brought 
peace,  and  would  not  have  endured. 


Ill 


AN  ENGLISH  VIEW  OF  THE 
INSURRECTION  AND  HOME  RULE 

IHE  following  English  statements  are 


A.  from  an  interesting  book  Dublin  — 
Explorations  and  Reflections,  published 
just  recently  (Dublin.  Maunsel  &  Co., 
1917).  The  author  gives  an  interesting 
and  vivid  account  of  what  he  conceives  to 
be  the  average  Englishman's  views  about 
Ireland.  He  approaches  the  subject  with 
an  open  and  disinterested  mind  and  with 
a  candor  and  honesty  that  I  like  to  think 
are  characteristic  of  the  liberty-loving 
English  people.  The  facts  stated  by  him 
and  his  conclusion  that  Dublin  is  one  of 
the  strongholds  of  liberty,  are  so  inter- 


37 


38    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

esting  that  I  need  not  apologize  for  quot- 
ing rather  fully  from  his  book: 

"The  murder  of  Mr.  Sheehy-Skeffing- 
ton  and  his  companions  was  a  sheer  stroke 
of  ill-fortune  for  England  for  which  it  is 
difficult  to  see  how  she  can  justly  be 
abused.  The  actual  culprit,  moreover, 
was  an  Irishman.  But  having  suffered 
the  disaster  of  this  ghastly  deed  one  would 
have  thought  those  responsible  for  gen- 
eral questions  of  policy  would  have  paused 
and  taken  thought.  Not  so.  The  meth- 
ods employed  in  suppressing  the  Rebellion 
of  1916  were  precisely  similar  to  the 
methods  employed  in  suppressing  the  Re- 
bellions of  1798  and  1803.  The  military 
mind  had  apparently  remained  impervious 
to  new  ideas  throughout  the  intervening 
century.  In  spite  of  all  the  harm  done  in 
the  past  to  Anglo-Irish  relations  by  the 
making  of  martyrs  and  national  heroes, 
more  martyrs  and  more  national  heroes 
were  made,  and  the  prestige  of  England 
was  permanently  lowered  in  the  eyes  of 
America  and  of  the  neutral  world.  She 
has  never  since  been  able  to  regain  the 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  39 

position  then  lost.  If  the  murder  of  Mr. 
Sheehy-Skeffington  was  simply  a  piece  of 
bad  luck  for  England,  for  the  attempts 
made  to  hush-up  that  tragic  business  she 
had  no  one  but  herself  to  blame. 

"  These  attempts  were  not  successful, 
they  were  persisted  in  for  a  week  or  two, 
then  dropped,  under  pressure,  in  such  a 
manner  as  gravely  to  shake  public  confi- 
dence in  the  administration.  There  was 
something  bungling  and  ignoble  in  the 
whole  proceeding.  England  behaved  like 
a  good-hearted,  respectable  rich  man  put 
in  a  false  and  ignominious  position  by  a 
momentary  lack  of  moral  courage.  When 
the  moment  was  passed  the  amends  were 
adequate  and  dignified,  but  they  came  too 
late.  What  a  contrast  to  all  this  seemed 
the  behaviour  of  the  rebel  leaders !  They 
were  foolish,  insane  as  it  appears  to  us, 
but  insanely  honest  and  sincere.  Nothing 
ignoble  or  mean  or  (according  to  their 
lights)  ungenerous,  has  ever  been  proved 
against  them.  The  inevitable  reaction  in 
England  in  their  favour  when  the  truth 
gradually  emerged  was  very  strong,  and 
its  influence  is  still  felt.    The  whole  epi- 


40    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


sode  of  the  Rebellion  has  indeed  struck 
through  the  black  fog  of  politics  which 
formerly  interposed  itself  between  our  eyes 
and  Ireland,  and  in  an  unforgettable 
lightning  flash  has  shown  us  Ireland's 
bleeding  heart  and  our  own  the  sword 
transfixing  it.  And  it  did  more,  that  ter- 
rible revealing  lightning  —  it  showed  us 
ourselves  as  we  never  thought  to  see  our- 
selves. It  is  an  awkward  moment  for  a 
nation  which  has  been  publicly  thanking 
God  that  it  is  not  as  other  nations  are, 
that  it  is  no  tyrant  but  the  protector  of 
the  oppressed,  no  wicked  Prussian  mili- 
tarist but  the  enemy  of  militarism,  when 
it  suddenly  becomes  suspect  of  the  very 
crimes  which  it  has  set  out  with  a  flourish 
of  trumpets  to  punish  other  races  for 
committing.  At  the  outbreak  of  the  re- 
volt we  held  all  the  cards,  the  sympathy 
was  all  with  us.  But  not  even  the  Ger- 
mans could  have  played  a  hand  more 
clumsily.  After  two  years  of  war  even 
the  man  in  the  street  was  capable  of  re- 
flecting that  there  must  be  1  something  be- 
hind '  the  outbreak.  And  from  this  it  was 
but  a  step  to  speculating  as  to  what  that 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  41 

something  could  be.  In  a  little  while,  the 
alarming  news  came  through  that  the  exe- 
cuted rebels  were  not  mere  thieves  and 
murderers  in  the  pay  of  Germany,  but 
schoolmasters  and  poets  of  blameless  pri- 
vate lives,  idealists,  abstemious,  self-deny- 
ing men,  deeply  religious.  What  was  the 
cause  which  inspired  them  ?  Who  was  op- 
pressing these  people?  Had  Ireland  then 
really  a  grievance  and,  if  so,  what  was 
it?  .  .  . 

"  After  the  rising  had  been  crushed  my 
country  presented  herself  to  my  mind  as 
a  rather  pompous  old  lady,  who,  whilst 
giving  herself  tremendous  airs  of  virtue,  is 
suddenly  struck  in  the  face  by  a  small  boy 
who  has  been  stood  in  the  corner  by  her 
for  a  longer  time  than  flesh  and  blood  will 
endure.  The  old  lady's  consternation  is 
pitiable.  She  may  be  pompous  and  ab- 
surd, however,  but  at  least  she  knows  how 
to  spank.  Presently,  she  spanks  so  hard, 
so  mercilessly,  that  all  the  onlookers,  and 
even  some  of  the  members  of  her  own  fam- 
ily cry  out  6  for  shame ! 9  But  she  takes 
no  heed  of  them. 

"  Whatever  the  Easter  Rebellion  may 


42    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


or  may  not  have  done  for  Ireland,  I  think 
it  has  helped  to  modify  the  attitude  of  a 
portion  of  the  British  public  towards  the 
war.  The  necessity  to  win  through  to  an 
honourable  peace  has  not  been  weakened 
by  it ;  but  the  old  confidence  that  we  were 
the  champions  of  small  nations,  that  ours 
was  a  6  Holy  War,'  that  we  could  never 
succumb  to  6  militarism '  has  received  a 
shock.  Englishmen  began  to  realize  that 
not  only  were  their  own  personal  liberties 
for  which  their  forefathers  struggled  and 
died  being  taken  from  them,  but  that  their 
country  was  actually  regarded  as  the  for- 
eign tyrant  by  a  large  proportion  of  the 
indigenous  population  of  the  sister  isle. 
It  would  not  surprise  me  if,  when  the  war 
is  over,  the  Dublin  revolt  were  held  to 
have  done  something  to  bring  peace 
nearer,  simply  by  helping  to  bring  about 
the  necessary  6  change  of  heart.' 

"  One  effect,  at  least,  of  the  Dublin  In- 
surrection is  beyond  dispute.  It  made 
Ireland  6  actual '  for  the  average  English- 
man —  as  actual  say  as  Serbia  or  Monte- 
negro ;  for  a  week  or  two,  as  actual  as 
Belgium.    Its  Rebellion,  however  keenly 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  48 

we  might  resent  it,  had  some  of  the  crudity 
and  brilliance  of  a  work  of  youthful 
genius,  and  a  marked  capacity  for  touch- 
ing the  imaginations  even  of  the  unimagi- 
native. And  it  had  a  strange  quality  of 
glamour,  the  glamour  which  attaches  it- 
self almost  immediately  to  events  which 
are  destined  to  live  in  history.  It  made 
English  people  realize  (for  the  first  time 
in  many  cases)  that  the  nation  which 
could  produce  men  capable  of  such  a  for- 
lorn hope,  whose  unhappy  circumstances 
urged  its  idealists  to  offer  up  their  lives 
in  the  vain  chance  of  bettering  them,  must 
be  one  of  rare  interest  —  a  nation  with  an 
unconquerable  soul  .  .  ."  (pages  13-17). 

And  again,  this  courageous  and  candid 
Englishman  says: 

"  If  I  am  unable  to  grow  enthusiastic 
about  Gaelic,  I  have  at  least  been  pro- 
foundly impressed  by  those  of  the  6  Irish  ' 
Irish  whom  I  have  encountered  in  Dublin. 
The  most  noticeable  thing  about  them  is 
that  they  are  good  people,  moved  by  noble 
impulses,  austere  and  simple  in  their  lives 
like  men  and  women  who  have  seen  a  vision 


44    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


and  are  filled  with  a  deep  purpose.  Mis- 
taken they  may  be  in  their  political  ideals 
(though  I  confess  I  do  not  believe  it),  but 
their  sincerity  shines  out  like  a  bright  star 
in  a  dark  night  of  corruption.  It  was 
from  people  of  this  kind  that  the  leaders 
of  the  recent  rebellion  were  drawn  and 
from  whom  any  further  human  sacrifices 
which  the  gods  may  demand  of  Ireland  will 
doubtless  be  taken.  It  is  not  a  pleasant 
thought  for  an  Englishman ;  but  then 
there  is  scarcely  a  page  of  Irish  history 
which  can  provide  pleasant  thoughts  for 
an  Englishman.  Perhaps  that  is  why, 
with  the  strong  commonsense  which  is  said 
to  distinguish  his  race,  no  Englishman 
ever  reads  one. 

"  As  for  the  '  moderate '  man  in  Irish 
politics,  I  confess  he  seems  to  me  to  be 
much  the  same  as  the  moderate  man  every- 
where else.  The  moderate  man  is  always 
prone  to  compromise,  to  engage  in  politi- 
cal buying  and  selling.  In  Ireland  he 
seems  to  be  particularly  adept  at  selling: 
perhaps  that  is  the  reason  why  he  invari- 
ably prospers. 

"  Throughout  my  stay  in  Dublin  I  have 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  45 


been  unable  to  resist  the  conviction  that  it 
is  the  '  Irish  '  Irish  who  hate  us  ( or  at 
least  our  Government)  most  bitterly 
whom  we  English  ought  most  truly  to  re- 
spect. The  clean  fire  of  their  loathing 
for  oppression  is  just  the  fire  which  so 
much  needs  re-kindling  in  our  own  hearts. 
If  we  could  but  join  them  in  the  real 
'  Holy  War  9  not  only  would  freedom  come 
to  Ireland,  but  to  England  herself  might 
be  restored  all  those  qualities  which  in  the 
past  have  made  her  great "  (pages  189- 
191). 

And  again  he  says : 

"  The  quickest  way  to  the  complete  re- 
union of  Ireland  with  the  Empire  seems  to 
be  through  an  exceptionally  generous  and 
comprehensive  measure  of  Home  Rule.  / 
cannot  imagine  any  appeal  to  the  gener- 
osity of  the  Irish  people  being  made  in 
vain  :  the  way  to  arouse  the  generous  emo- 
tions of  others  is,  assuredly,  to  be  gener- 
ous oneself.  I  do  not  believe  that  the 
England  which  the  average  Irishman  sees 
bears  any  relation  whatever  to  the  true 
England.    I  shall  never  believe,  in  spite  of 


46    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

recent  history,  that  my  country  is  really 
militarist  at  heart.  There  is,  however,  a 
certain  type  of  narrow-minded  English- 
men, kept  exclusively  for  export  purposes, 
who  goes  about  the  world  like  a  misguided 
fanatic,  dropping  the  dead  weight  of  the 
white  man's  burden  on  the  already  bowed 
necks  of  those  unfortunate  '  backward 9 
races  who  are  too  weak  to  protest.  This 
type  of  Englishman  has  for  centuries 
made  the  mistake  of  dumping  himself  and 
his  burdens  on  to  Ireland.  Ireland,  how- 
ever, though  poor  in  cash  is  rich  in  spirit. 
There  has  been  trouble,  and  there  always 
will  be  trouble  until  the  export  to  Ireland 
of  British  Junkers  is  once  and  for  all  pro- 
hibited. When  that  happens,  I  see  no 
reason  why  the  friendship  between  Eng- 
land and  Ireland,  a  friendship  based  on 
mutual  understanding,  should  not  ripen 
apace.  Both  countries  will  have  much  to 
gain  by  it,  but  of  the  two  I  think  England 
will  gain  more.  The  Irish  possess  essen- 
tial qualities  which  the  English  lack. 
They  are  to  my  mind  the  salt  of  the  Brit- 
ish peoples,  the  invaluable  leaven  without 
which  the  Anglo-Saxon  would  grow  ever 
more  lumpy  99  (pages  265-266). 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  47 

The  author  goes  on  to  compare  the 
relations  of  England  and  Ireland  to  that 
of  a  husband  and  wife,  the  husband  having 
been  neglectful  of  the  wife's  proper 
claims,  and  the  wife  taking  advantage  of 
a  moment  when  the  husband  was  himself 
embarrassed  to  assert  her  claims.  The 
case  goes  to  court,  the  lawyers  go  on  talk- 
ing, bargains  and  settlements  are  agreed 
to,  pledged  words  broken,  the  wife  grows 
more  haggard  and  weary,  and  then  at 
last  the  young  men  who  love  her  dearly 
and  who  never  could  understand  the  law 
and  who  cannot  bear  the  delays,  burst 
out  with  a  sudden  madness : 

w  With  bombs  and  rifles  in  their  hands 
they  march  to  the  doors  of  the  Great 
Court  in  which  so  many  millions  of  words 
have  been  uttered  and  so  little  accom- 
plished. They  create,  this  little  band,  a 
tremendous  disturbance  with  their  bombs 
and  their  explosions ;  they  startle  all  the 
Judges  out  of  their  seven  senses ;  they  kill, 


48    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

alas,  a  few  of  the  loyal  servants  of  the 
Court;  and  they  are  killed  themselves. 
But  they  are  glad  to  die.  They  were 
tired  of  all  the  writing  and  all  the  talking. 
They  wanted  to  do  something. 

"  When  the  commotion  calms  down,  and 
the  lady's  younger  and  too  ardent  sup- 
porters have  all  been  executed  and  impris- 
oned the  Court  continues  its  deliberations. 
It  continues  them  still ;  but  it  seems  to  me 
that  things  are  not  the  same.  The  Reb- 
els, pathetic  and  hopeless  as  their  out- 
break was,  have  achieved  something.  The 
Judges  are  nervous  and  jangled,  a  little 
doubtful  of  their  omniscience.  The  explo- 
sion of  the  bombs  was  uncomfortably  near 
their  own  noses.  Moreover,  the  disturb- 
ance has  called  the  attention  of  the  whole 
world  to  the  dilatoriness  and  incompetence 
with  which  the  Irish  case  has  been  con- 
ducted. The  Court,  and  all  the  counsel 
engaged  on  both  sides  are  suspect.  On 
the  rich  husband's  side  the  attention  of 
many  of  his  relatives  (particularly  of  his 
grandsons  and  great-nephews)  has  for  the 
first  time  been  attracted  to  his  treatment 
of  his  unhappy  wife.    They  consider  it  an 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  49 


abomination,  and  will  no  longer  support 
him  in  his  meanness.  And  on  the  lady's 
side,  the  outburst  of  the  young  men  has 
brought  about  a  still  more  widespread  dis- 
trust of  the  lawyers  who,  advancing  al- 
ways to  the  struggle  with  their  drawn  sal- 
aries in  their  hands,  have  nothing  but  the 
extraction  of  a  certain  amount  of  alimony 
in  the  form  of  Land  Acts  (perilously  like 
bribes)  to  show  for  their  endeavours. 
Yes :  on  the  side  of  the  Dark  Rosalsen,  the 
hearts  of  many  of  her  supporters  go  out 
now  to  the  fools  who  had  no  salary  at  all, 
but  who,  nevertheless,  in  a  frenzy  of  gen- 
erous impatience,  laid  down  their  lives  " 
(pages  270-271). 

Padraic  H.  Pearse,  whose  name  will  be 
always  remembered  as  the  leader  of  the 
revolt,  has  been  presented  in  such  various 
aspects  to  the  American  public  that  it 
will  be  useful  to  call  attention  here  to  his 
collected  works  now  in  course  of  publica- 
tion of  which  the  first  volume  has  lately 
appeared.  Not  a  single  thought  can  be 
found    that    is    unworthy    or  ignoble. 


50    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

It  was  well  said  in  a  recent  brief  Irish 
review  of  this  interesting  book:  "Prob- 
ably no  more  selfless  spirit  ever  broke 
itself  against  the  might  of  the  Iron  Age 
than  this  man's  spirit  which  was  lit  up 
by  love  of  children  and  country,  a  dreamer 
with  his  heart  in  the  Golden  Age.  This 
man,  much  more  simple  than  Thomas 
McDonagh  or  Joseph  Plunkett,  had  a 
much  greater  and  more  original  personal- 
ity, and  as  we  read  this  book  we  under- 
stand his  pre-eminence  among  the  revolu- 
tionaries. The  fact  was  he  had  infinite 
faith,  he  was  selfless,  and  therefore  he  was 
a  moral  rock  to  lean  on.  As  we  read  this 
book,  with  its  gentleness  and  its  idealism, 
and  think  of  the  storm  he  raised,  we  are 
reminded  of  the  scriptural  picture  of  a 
little  child  leading  the  lion,  only  in  this 
case  it  was  in  no  idyllic  fields  the  child 
was,  but  it  was  hallooing  the  beast  on  to 
rend  its  enemies.    Undoubtedly  Padraic 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  51 

Pearse  was  a  powerful  and  unique  person- 
ality, and  the  publication  of  this  volume 
in  which  is  collected  his  best  writing  will 
give  him  that  place  in  Irish  literature 
which  he  is  entitled  to  by  merit,  and  which 
would  be  justly  his  quite  apart  from  the 
place  in  Irish  history  he  has  gained  by  his 
astonishing  enterprise." 

One  of  Pearse's  poems  has  this : 

"  I  have  squandered  the  splendid  years  that 
the  Lord  God  gave  to  my  youth 

In  attempting  impossible  things,  deeming 
them  alone  worth  the  toil. 

Was  it  folly  or  grace?    Not  men  shall 
judge  me,  but  God. 

And: 

"  I  have  heard  in  my  heart,  that  a 

man  shall  scatter,  not  hoard, 
Shall  do  the  deed  of  today,  nor  take  thought 

of  tomorrow's  teen, 
Shall  not  bargain  or  huxter  with  God/' 


That  was  the  faith  of  Padraic  Pearse. 


IV 


THE  AMERICAN  POINT  OF  VIEW 

HE  feeling  of  Americans  generally 


X  as  to  Ireland's  right  to  home  rule 
cannot  be  better  expressed  than  in  the 
words  of  William  James  in  his  memorable 
address  upon  the  unveiling  of  the  monu- 
ment in  Boston  to  Robert  Gould  Shaw. 
At  the  conclusion  of  that  address  he  said  : 

"  Democracy  is  still  upon  its  trial. 
The  civic  genius  of  our  people  is  its  only 
bulwark,  and  neither  laws  nor  monuments, 
neither  battleships  nor  public  libraries, 
nor  great  newspapers  nor  booming  stocks ; 
neither  mechanical  invention  nor  political 
adroitness,  nor  churches  nor  universities 
nor  civil  service  examinations  can  save  us 
from  degeneration  if  the  inner  mystery  be 
lost.    That  mystery,  at  once  the  secret 


52 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  53 


and  the  glory  of  our  English-speaking 
race,  consists  in  nothing  but  two  common 
habits,  two  inveterate  habits  carried  into 
public  life, —  habits  so  homely  that  they 
lend  themselves  to  no  rhetorical  expres- 
sion, yet  habits  more  precious,  perhaps, 
than  any  that  the  human  race  has  gained. 
They  can  never  be  too  often  pointed  out 
or  praised.  One  of  them  is  the  habit  of 
trained  and  disciplined  good  temper  to- 
wards the  opposite  party  when  it  fairly 
wins  its  innings.  It  was  by  breaking 
away  from  this  habit  that  the  Slave  States 
nearly  wrecked  our  Nation.  The  other  is 
that  of  fierce  and  merciless  resentment  to- 
ward every  man  or  set  of  men  who  break 
the  public  peace.  By  holding  to  this  habit 
the  free  States  saved  her  life." 

The  people  of  the  United  States  feel 
that  neither  Ulster  nor  those  of  the  Tories 
in  England  who  financed  and  backed  Ul- 
ster's ante-war  pronouncements,  exercised 
any  trained  or  disciplined  good  temper  to- 
wards nationalist  Ireland  "  when  it  had 
fairly  won  its  innings."    They  also  feel 


54    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


that  the  Ulstermen  and  their  English  sup- 
porters rightly  merited  that  "  fierce  and 
merciless  resentment  toward  every  man  or 
set  of  men  who  break  the  public  peace." 

To  thoughtful  observers  in  this  coun- 
try, Ireland  seems  politically  to  be  some- 
what backward.  But  there  has  been  a 
great  deal  of  political  education  recently 
outside  of  the  regular  parliamentary 
party.  The  Irish  volunteers  encouraged 
a  hopeful  spirit  of  self-respect  and  dis- 
cipline. There  is  good  material  for  a  real 
constitutional  settlement.  The  things 
that  were  to  be  feared  were  secret  agree- 
ments, intrigues  and  weakness.  But  the 
days  of  those  things  have  passed.  There 
must  be  no  repetitions  of  the  weakness  and 
timidity  that  prompted  the  Parliamentary 
party  to  agree  to  partition  twice.  The 
convention  now  sitting  in  Dublin  has  a 
unique  opportunity  for  great  service. 
The  world  will  applaud  a  settlement  that 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  55 

is  a  real  solution.  But  a  division  of  Ire- 
land, even  of  two  or  three  counties,  will 
be  regarded  as  an  Ulster  victory,  and  will 
be  regarded  by  Irishmen  all  over  the 
world  as  another  trick.  Anything  that 
even  looks  like  an  Ulster  victory  will  be 
bad. 

It  is  likely  that  few  people  in  England 
realize  to  what  extent  the  Irish  question 
interests  all  sections  and  all  varieties  of 
people  in  the  United  States.  In  villages 
and  cities  in  the  west  and  south,  as  well  as 
in  New  England  and  the  Middle  Atlantic 
states,  the  question  of  Irish  government  in 
its  broad  lines  is  remarkably  well  known. 
Americans  sympathize  with  Ireland  be- 
cause they  feel  that  she  had  "  fairly  won 
her  innings  "  and  had  been  deprived  of  her 
innings.  They  feel  that  the  resistance 
by  Ulster  to  the  home  rule  act  would 
never  have  gone  to  the  extent  that  it  did 
but  for  the  encouragement  of  a  small 


56    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

group  of  powerful  English  Tories  and  the 
support  of  certain  powerful  English  finan- 
cial interests,  who,  wishing  to  prevent  the 
carrying  out  of  English  radical  reforms, 
looked  about  for  a  way  of  defeating  the 
Liberal  party,  and  hit  upon  Sir  Edward 
Carson  and  the  Ulster  question  as  the  rock 
'  on  which  to  break  the  Liberal  party  or 
drive  it  from  power.  Ulster  supplied  the 
familiar  "moral  issue."  Old  and  dying 
feelings  of  religious  bigotry  were  revived. 
The  Tories  and  the  financiers  backed  and 
financed  Ulster,  and  Sir  Edward  Carson 
argued  and  managed  the  case  for  them, 
not  because  they  loved  Ulster  or  were 
really  afraid  of  religious  persecution,  but 
because  they  wanted  to  get  the  Liberals 
out  and  the  Tories  in.  The  result  is 
known:  the  rejection  of  the  home  rule  act 
by  the  Lords;  the  House  of  Lords  act; 
long  delay ;  then  when  the  House  of  Lords 
act  had  become  a  law,  the  Ulster  volun- 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  57 

teers,  Sir  Edward  Carson's  threats,  dis- 
affection in  the  army,  the  Curragh  trea- 
son, Sir  Edward  Carson's  visit  to  the 
kaiser,  open  threats  of  rebellion  in  Ulster 
by  Sir  Edward  Carson  and  others  in  and 
out  of  Ulster;  the  Buckingham  Palace 
conference  and  its  failure;  and  then  the 
war.  Many  people  forget  that  the  Buck- 
ingham Palace  conference  over  the  home 
rule  question,  which  resulted  in  a  dead- 
lock, ended  July  24-25,  1914,  and  that 
England  and  Germany  were  at  war 
August  4,  1914.  It  is  believed  in  the 
United  States  that  Germany  would  not 
have  forced  the  war  if  she  had  believed  that 
England  would  come  in;  that  Germany 
felt  that  England  would  not  come  in 
largely  because  of  the  Ulster  business,  and 
of  what  was  believed  in  Germany  to  be 
general  treason  and  disaffection  in  the 
English  army;  and  that  therefore  the 
Carsons,  the  Lansdownes,  the  London- 


58    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

derrys,  the  Selbournes  and  the  others  have 
a  heavy  responsibility  for  the  war.  If 
that  belief  is  unfounded,  still  it  is  a 
belief. 

Then  even  when  the  war  broke  out,  Mr. 
Asquith  and  his  associates  put  the  old 
patch-work  home  rule  act  on  the  statute 
books  indeed,  but  provided  that  it  should 
not  go  into  effect  until  after  the  war,  and 
then  only  with  amendments ;  giving,  as  was 
said,  a  promissory  note  payable  after 
death,  giving  with  one  hand  and  taking 
away  with  the  other.  But  at  last  Eng- 
lish opinion  is  awake,  the  English  sense  of 
justice  and  fair  play  is  aroused.  Eng- 
land has  done  her  best  to  make  this  last 
effort  a  success.  The  amnesty  of  all  the 
Irish  political  prisoners,  which  preceded 
the  constitution  of  the  convention,  was 
wise  statesmanship. 


V 


SOME  IRISH  OPINIONS 

OPINIONS  in  Ireland  and  in  England 
differ  as  to  the  outcome  of  the 
convention.  Some  are  hopeful,  others 
pessimistic,  but  none  indifferent.  I  could 
quote  from  scores  of  letters  from  promi- 
nent and  influential  Englishmen  and  Irish- 
men, nearly  every  one  giving  a  different 
shade  of  opinion.  One  does  not  see  how 
anything  can  reconcile  Ulster  and  the 
South;  another  argues  that  Svrm  Fein 
has  split  if  not  ruined  the  Nationalist 
party ;  another  that  any  problem  founded 
on  a  political-cum^religious  rock  is  diffi- 
cult of  solution.  Others  have  no  patience 
with  Svrm  Fein  and  one  rather  bitterly 

59 


60    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


writes  that  it  is  Sinn  Fein  uber  Allies  with 
them  and  that  they  would  "  scrap  any 
flag,  including  the  Stars  and  Stripes,  ex- 
cept the  German  Flag."  Another  hopes 
that  "  things  will  settle  down  without  any 
further  bloodshed,55  but  doubts  it,  and  adds 
that  "  Little  is  to  be  expected  from  fanati- 
cism except  blood.55 

One  of  the  most  distinguished  and  best- 
informed  statesmen  and  publicists  in  Eng- 
land who  knows  Ireland  thoroughly  is  not 
sanguine  as  to  the  success  of  the  con- 
vention, adding:  "  for  the  Ulster  obstruc- 
tionists, having  been  foolishly  told  by 
the  Government  that  they  would  have  a 
virtual  veto,  are  likely  to  be  dogged  in 
refusing  concessions.  However,  we  must 
hope  for  the  best.55  Others  believe  that 
nothing  but  a  representative  convention 
would  be  able  to  produce  a  result  and  have 
it  accepted. 

But  all  recognize  the  vital  importance 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  61 


of  a  generally  satisfactory  solution  by  the 
convention.  The  following  from  an  ar- 
ticle in  The  Contemporary  Review,  Au- 
gust, 1917,  by  Mr.  J.  W.  Good,  on  The 
Spirit  of  Belfast  is  not  pessimistic  but 
does  not  dodge  the  difficulties  of  the  situa- 
tion: 

"  If  both  Ulster  parties  react  in  the 
same  fashion  when  England  rubs  them  the 
wrong  way  they  display  also,  as  against 
franc  tireurs  and  unauthorized  combatants, 
the  freemasonry  of  professional  soldiers. 
Sir  Horace  Plunkett  —  to  whom  we  owe 
the  saying  *  a  man  in  Ireland  without  a 
party  is  like  a  dog  in  a  tennis  court 9 — 
had  the  melancholy  satisfaction  of  proving 
the  truth  of  his  own  epigram,  when,  on 
suspicion  of  a  weakening  in  his  opposition 
to  Home  Rule,  the  Ulster  Unionists,  who 
for  years  had  been  calling  on  the  National- 
ists to  bow  down  to  him  as  the  ideal  states- 
man, bluntly  told  him  to  get  back  to  his 
milk-cans  and  churns  and  leave  politics  to 
those  who  understood  them.  There  was 
an  even  more  glaring  instance  in  the  early 


62    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


days  of  the  war  when  some  well-inten- 
tioned folk  sought  to  organize  in  Belfast 
a  Home  Defence  Corps  on  the  English 
principle,  free  from  any  tinge  of  politics. 
The  Unionists  immediately  declared  that 
the  proper  place  for  any  man  who  had  not 
signed  the  Covenant  was  not  in  some 
*  fancy 9  corps  but  in  the  Irish  National 
Volunteers;  the  Nationalists  were  equally 
insistent  that  if  any  one  outside  their  or- 
ganization wanted  to  shoulder  a  rifle  he 
should  do  so  as  an  Ulster  Volunteer.  One 
is  sometimes  tempted  to  think  that  the 
paupers  in  Lady  Gregory's  comedy,  who 
wrangle  so  venomously  and  yet  are  not 
happy  away  from  one  another,  symbolize 
perfectly  the  spirit  of  political  Ulster. 

"  The  better  one  knows  the  North  of 
Ireland  the  less  one  is  inclined  to  accept 
the  4  two  nations  5  theory  which  figures  so 
much  in  current  controversy.  It  is  merely 
the  old  fallacy  of  the  opposition  of  Celt 
and  Saxon,  which,  as  Lecky  showed  a  gen- 
eration ago,  bears  no  relation  to  the  facts 
of  the  Irish  situation.  .  .  .  The  error 
into  which  most  outsiders  fall  is  that  they 
contrast  the  Ulster  Unionist  with  the  Na- 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  63 


tionalist  of  the  South  and  West,  and  nat- 
urally fail  to  find  much  in  common  between 
them.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  tempera- 
ment and  outlook  the  Belfast  Loyalist,  as 
he  loves  to  describe  himself,  is  farther 
apart  from  the  Unionist  of  Cork  or  Lim- 
erick than  the  Protestant  of  the  Shankill 
is  from  the  Catholic  of  the  Falls.  His 
quarrel  with  his  Nationalist  neighbours  is 
less  a  clash  between  races  than  an  embit- 
tered family  feud.  Only  near  relations 
have  the  same  uncanny  knowledge  of  each 
other's  weak  points,  and  the  same  skill  in 
getting  their  thrusts  home  between  the 
joints  of  their  opponent's  armour.  There 
is  a  story  of  a  Jewish  Lord  Mayor  of  Bel- 
fast who  in  a  time  of  civil  commotion  tried 
to  make  peace  between  the  hostile  mobs, 
and  was  extinguished  by  a  shout  from  the 
crowd :  1  What  right  have  you  to  inter- 
fere in  a  fight  between  Christians  ?  5  Un- 
fortunately, some  one  is  always  ready  to 
interfere,  and  it  is  this  knowledge  that 
keeps  the  rival  parties  from  arriving  at  an 
agreement  —  were  it  only  an  agreement  to 
differ. 

"  It  is  generally  assumed  that  the  events 


64     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


of  recent  years  have  made  the  task  of 
reconciliation  in  Ulster  almost  impossible. 
The  manoeuvre  battles  of  the  old  days  were 
bad  enough,  but  the  rival  forces  are  now 
entrenched  in  Hindenburg  lines  which  no 
bombardment  of  facts  or  arguments  can 
breach.  There  are  plenty  of  facts,  unfor- 
tunately, to  support  this  view,  but  the  rule, 
as  strangers  imagine  it  to  be,  that  every- 
thing in  Ireland  goes  by  contraries,  seems 
to  me  to  apply  here.  Having  lived  in 
Ulster  for  years  before  Sir  Edward  Carson 
blossomed  forth  as  1  a  leader  of  revolt,5  I 
am  not  impressed  by  the  case  which  spe- 
cial pleaders  in  both  camps  make  that  old 
hostilities  were  dying  out  till  the  present 
agitation  gave  them  a  new  lease  of  life. 
Unionists  accept  that  theory  because  it 
enables  them  to  contend  that  there  was 
no  real  demand  for  Home  Rule ;  National- 
ists use  it  as  a  stick  for  the  backs  of 
Tories,  who  exploited  Ulster  antagonisms 
in  the  hope  of  overthrowing  a  hated  Radi- 
cal Government.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
taint  was  in  the  blood,  though  its  pres- 
ence might  not  have  been  so  plain  to  a 
casual  eye ;  and,  personally,  I  believe  it  is 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  65 


not  altogether  a  bad  thing  that  it  should 
have  been  driven  to  the  surface  in  baleful 
eruption.  Without  the  eruption  the  dis- 
ease might  have  been  ignored  till  it  was  too 
late ;  it  is  now  clear,  even  to  those  who  pro- 
fessed to  regard  the  spread  of  the  infection 
as  a  sign  of  health  and  energy,  that  a  rem- 
edy must  be  found,  if  the  whole  body  poli- 
tic is  not  to  rot  into  corruption." 

I  regret  that  Dr.  Douglas  Hyde  is  not 
a  member  of  the  convention.  He  was 
one  of  the  organizers  of  and  for  over 
twenty  years  the  president  of  the  Gaelic 
League.  That  League  and  Sir  Horace 
Plunkett's  Irish  Agricultural  Organiza- 
tion Society  were  the  two  great  organiza- 
tions in  Ireland  that  knew  neither  politics 
nor  creed;  in  whose  work  Unionist  and 
Nationalist  and  Sinn  Feiner  and  Catholic 
and  Protestant  could  and  did  take  part 
side  by  side.  Hyde  resigned  the  presi- 
dency of  the  Gaelic  League  when  it  became 
political.    He  made  the  great  refusal  of 


4 


66    The  Irish  'Home-Rule  Convention 


not  consenting  to  continue  at  the  head  of 
the  body,  to  which  he  had  given  the  best 
years  of  his  life,  after  it  had  been  cap- 
tured by  the  extremists  and  made  in  part 
into  a  political  organization.  Douglas 
Hyde,  William  Butler  Yeats,  Lady  Greg- 
ory, and  George  Russell,  in  literature  and 
the  drama,  and  Sir  Hugh  Lane  in  art,  have 
been  the  leaders  in  the  preparation  for 
home  rule  and  have  worked  to  enrich  the 
life  of  the  nation. 

I  also  regret  that  Standish  O'Grady, 
that  great-hearted,  wise,  tolerant  Irish- 
man, the  noblest  of  them  all,  is  not  in  the 
convention.  He  is  a  member  of  no  party, 
because  he  is  above  all  parties. 

It  is  generally  regretted  that  the  Sinn 
Feiners  remained  out  of  the  convention. 
The  Sinn  Feiners  holding  out  against  the 
convention  deprive  it  of  the  services  of 
men  like  Professor  John  MacNeill,  one  of 
the  most  acute  minds  in  Ireland,  a  man  who 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  67 


has  never  been  pro-German  or  in  league 
with  any  Germans,  a  man  always  capable 
of  being  reasoned  with;  and  of  men  like 
Gavan  Duffy  and  Colonel  Maurice  Moore, 
who  are  reasonable  and  not  really  fanat- 
ics. While  these  men  have  not  gone  into 
the  convention,  my  hope  is  that  they  will 
give  aid  to  memberssof  the  convention  who 
will  press  on  the  convention  a  good  meas- 
ure, and  if  a  good  measure  is  agreed  upon 
I  believe  that  the  majority  of  the  Sinn 
Femers  will  accept  it.  That  is  appa- 
rently the  policy  of  the  Sinn  Femers  —  to 
remain  outside  and  spur  the  convention  by 
extreme  demands,  but  to  accept  the  agree- 
ment if  the  system  of  government  is  a 
good  one  and  includes  Ulster.  While  the 
bodies  whose  representatives  form  the 
largest  part  of  the  convention  member- 
ship are  no  longer  representative  them- 
selves of  political  opinion,  and  while  the 
chairmen  of  county  councils  are  not  by 


68    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

character  or  education  fitted  to  discuss 
constitutional  questions,  the  hope  for  the 
convention  is  that  a  few  intelligent 
men  who  know  what  they  want  will  form 
a  solid  bloc  and  reinforce  each  other  and 
overcome  the  rest  by  sheer  force  of  argu- 
ment as  to  the  justice,  the  necessity,  the 
policy,  both  from  an  Irish  and  from  an 
imperial  point  of  view,  of  a  complete,  sat- 
isfactory, acceptable  settlement  that  will 
include  all  Ireland. 

A  few  months  ago  the  question  was, 
what  kind  of  folk  the  Ulster  government 
would  send,  whether  they  would  be  mod- 
erate and  reasonable  or  "  die-hards."  If 
the  latter  were  to  be  sent,  and  if  it 
appeared  that  they  only  came  in  to 
separate  Ulster,  then,  as  a  well-informed 
friend  of  mine  wrote,  "  the  convention 
had  better  dissolve  at  once,  because  parti- 
tion will  be  no.  settlement."  But  now 
the    question    has    changed.    Sir  Ed- 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  69 


ward  Carson  is  no  longer  the  idol  of 
Ulster.  His  name  is  not  likely  to  be  en- 
shrined in  history  in  connection  with  any 
great  or  beneficent,  social,  economic  or 
political  reform.  He  is  more  likely  to  be 
associated  with  one  of  the  most  sinister 
episodes  in  the  history  of  England  and  Ire- 
land. In  fact  Ulster  might  be  pointed  to 
as  a  victim  of  the  power  of  over-sugges- 
tion in  politics.  Over-suggestion  and 
outer-suggestion  may  be  said  to  have 
passed  into  auto-suggestion.  But  thanks 
to  liberal  injections  of  the  anti-toxin  of 
common  sense  and  cold  reason,  the  fever 
has  died  down.  Ulster  is  cool  and  ra- 
tional again.  She  has  waked  up.  Ulster 
will  make  the  sacrifice  of  her  pride  and 
will  take  the  risk  of  what  some  Ulster- 
men  fear  may  be  a  peril  to  their  business 
interests.  She  will  place  the  greater  in- 
terest above  her  own  pride  and  fears. 
She  will  take  the  imperial  and  not  the 


70    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


parochial  course.  She  has  nothing  to 
fear,  neither  Popery,  the  cry  of  which  was 
absurd,  nor  confiscation  or  spoliation, 
which  were  equally  absurd,  nor  lack  of 
business  ability  in  Ireland  outside  of  Ul- 
ster. The  claim  that  Ulster  must  have 
guaranties  was  always  an  absurdity.  The 
patched-up  home  rule  act  now  upon 
the  statute  books  of  Great  Britain 
guards  in  explicit  terms  against  any 
possible  dangers  to  religious  liberty  and 
to  equality  before  the  law  in  a  way  that 
probably  no  other  constitution  does. 
And  if  that  act,  loaded  down  with  guar- 
anties as  it  is,  does  not  satisfy  Ulster,  let 
guaranties  be  piled  upon  guaranties  until 
Ulster  must  admit  that  she  is  satisfied. 

I  feel  confident  that  England  now  real- 
izes that  if  the  work  of  the  convention  is 
bungled  and  a  satisfactory  measure  is  not 
passed,  nationalist  Ireland  will  settle  back 
into  a  cold  anger  and  that  all  the  work  of 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  71 


the  past  twenty-five  years  to  bring  about 
friendly  relations  between  Protestant  and 
Catholic  will  be  lost.  Seldom  has  a 
finer  opportunity  for  vision  and  courage 
come  to  a  body  of  delegates  than  to  those 
who  will  control  the  work  of  the  conven- 
tion. A  wise  and  eloquent  Irish  friend  of 
mine  wrote  me  recently :  "  The  Irish  na- 
tional mood  is  today  like  molten  metal,  and 
unless  some  skilful  political  artificer  can 
seize  the  glowing  mass  and  press  it  into  the 
ideal  mould,  it  will  cool  in  a  mould  and 
mood  which  promise  little  good." 

Many  Sinn  Feiners  advocate  "  an  inde- 
pendent Ireland."  If  by  that  they  mean 
a  republic,  they  will,  in  my  judgment,  get 
it  only  as  a  sequel  of  a  revolution  in  Eng- 
land, in  which  no  one  believes.  On  the 
other  hand,  Americans  should  not  be  mis- 
led by  the  common  charges  against  the 
Sirm  Fevners.    The  main  body  of  them 

ARE     CONSTITUTIONAL     REFORMERS.  The 


72    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

Parliamentary  party  has  not  troubled  it- 
self much  during  the  last  twenty  years 
about  the  young  men  who  wanted  temper- 
ance, co-operation,  education  and  the  like. 
And  unless  the  Parliamentary  party  moves 
along  better  and  sounder  lines  than  in  the 
past,  it  can  never  lead  the  people.  It  may 
machine  them,  but  that  will  not  mend  mat- 
ters. 

I  believe  that  colonial  home  rule  would 
amply  satisfy  nineteen-twentieths  of  the 
people  of  Ireland.  Wise  and  liberal  Irish- 
men do  not  care  to  see  a  republic 
preached,  lest  when  real  grievances  are 
settled  the  demand  for  a  republic 
should  persist  and  throw  things  into  con- 
fusion. If  a  satisfactory  home  rule  meas- 
ure with  Ulster  included  is  produced  by 
the  convention,  their  judgment  is  that 
only  the  few  hotheads  would  continue  to 
demand  a  republic.    But  the  Nationalists 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  73 


and  the  majority  of  the  Sinn  Feiners  be- 
lieve that  it  would  be  better  for  Ireland 
not  to  be  distracted  by  any  further 
politics,  if  the  convention  once  gives  a 
decent  settlement. 

The  choice  of  Sir  Horace  Plunkett  as 
chairman  of  the  convention,  and  the  fact 
that  George  W.  Russell  (A.E.)  is  one  of 
the  leading  members  of  the  convention  and 
was  a  member  of  the  committee  to  suggest 
a  chairman,  have  convinced  me  that  the 
work  of  the  convention  will  be  honest  and 
sound.  Plunkett's  chairmanship  is  popu- 
lar in  Ireland.  People  know  that  he  is 
straight  and  wants  to  bring  about  a  settle- 
ment. He  is  a  good  Irishman,  and  one  of 
the  sanest  and  fairest  men  I  have  ever 
known.  The  secretary  of  the  convention 
is  Sir  Francis  Hopwood,  and  it  is  signifi- 
cant that  one  of  the  first  requests  made  of 
him  was  for  information  in  regard  to  the 


74    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


procedure  adopted  by  the  convention  that 
drew  up  the  constitution  for  the  union  of 
South  Africa. 

A  hopeful  sign  also  is  that  Mr.  Erskine 
Childers  is  on  the  secretariat.  He  is  one 
of  the  clearest  thinkers  and  best  writers 
on  home  rule  questions  in  Ireland  or  Eng- 
land. His  book  The  Framework  of  Home 
Rule  (1911)  is,  apart  from  the  eloquent 
article  of  George  Russell's  reprinted  in 
this  book,  the  only  piece  of  high  politics  on 
the  subject  I  know.  The  Government  al- 
lowed him  to  come  back  from  France  on 
application  for  his  services.  I  am  told 
that  so  far  the  meetings  of  the  convention 
have  been  in  good  spirit. 

And  now  I  am  leaving  the  region  of  fact 
and  coming  to  that  of  prophecy.  I  be- 
lieve the  Convention  will  be  a  success. 
The  leaders  are  more  reasonable  than  their 
followers.  Meeting  together  and  talking 
without  the  newspapers  being  able  to  get 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  75 


at  them,  will  lead  them  to  agree  upon  what 
is  right.  I  am  satisfied  that  the  ma- 
jority of  the  convention  will  see  to  it  that 
there  shall  not  come  out  of  the  convention 
any  reasonable  grounds  for  belief  that 
Ulster  has  won,  that  Ulster  has  had  her 
way,  that  secret  diplomacy  has  again 
come  out  on  top,  that  back-stairs  intrigue 
and  private  understandings  are  not  over, 
but  that  broad  statesmanship  and  a  genu- 
ine desire  to  promote  the  interests  of  Ire- 
land and  of  England  have  been  the  guiding 
motive  of  the  convention,  I  believe  that 
the  wretched  history  of  the  last  few  years 
will  be  reversed  by  the  action  of  the  con- 
vention. I  believe  that  the  work  of  the 
convention  will  be  approved  by  the  coun- 
try, that  the  convention  will  give  genuine 
home  rule  to  an  undivided  Ireland,  and 
that  public  opinion  in  the  United  States 
and  in  Canada  and  Australia,  as  well  as  in 
Ireland  and  England,  will  applaud  and  re- 


76    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


joice  at  its  work  as  a  genuine  and  honest 
settlement.  I  know  that  to  be  the  desire 
of  men  like  Sir  Horace  Plunkett  and 
George  W.  Russell,  and  if  their  views  pre- 
vail they  will  have  done  not  merely  lasting 
good  for  Ireland,  but  will  have  delivered 
a  powerful  blow  for  the  defeat  of  the  com- 
mon enemy  of  all. 

The  following  is  from  one  of  the  best- 
informed  of  the  young  Irish  writers  : 

u  The  present  Irish  situation  will  nat- 
urally seem  confused  at  the  distance.  The 
fact  is,  however,  that  the  Irish  situation 
is  rapidly  clarifying  itself,  and  we  are  a 
good  deal  nearer  to  a  united  country  than 
we  have  been  in  the  whole  of  the  later 
period.  For  the  Parliamentary  party  it 
is,  of  course,  a  land-slide :  it  is  so  for  more 
than  the  party,  for  the  Unionists  even  will 
come  sliding  down  the  slippery  slope  and 
be  clasped  to  our  bosoms.  •  .  . 

"  It  has  been  said,  against  the  Conven- 
tion (which  is  holding  its  second  meeting 
today),  that  it  has  no  mandate  from  the 
country.    That  is  not  the  fact.    It  has, 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  77 


unexpressed  indeed,  but  very  definitely,  a 
mandate.  When  one  gathers  together  a 
number  of  facts  there  gathers  round  them 
an  air,  an  atmosphere,  a  kind  of  psycho- 
logical fringe,  and  the  man  who  can  in- 
terpret this  brings  home  the  bacon. 
Around  the  grouped  facts  of  our  conven- 
tion there  is  such  a  fringe.  The  country 
has  declared  for  and  against  partition,  it 
has  declared  for  and  against  a  republic,  it 
has  declared  for  and  against  the  old  home 
rule  bill  which  is  on  the  statute  book: 
it  has  mentioned,  without  much  emphasis, 
it  is  true,  but  without  any  antagonism,  the 
idea  of  colonial  self-government.  All  the 
other  ideas  have  been  advanced  and  have 
been  attacked.  Colonial  home  rule  has 
been  advanced,  and  has  not  been  attacked 
by  any  one.  That  is  the  psychological 
fact  which  surrounds  the  other  facts,  and 
the  absolute  mandate  of  the  country  to  the 
men  gathered  in  the  Regent  House  (that 
last  infirmary  for  noble  minds)  is,  Let  ye 
talk  about  colonial  home  rule,  and  if  ye 
don't  talk  about  that  then  shut  your  gobs 
and  go  home  —  Gob,  by  the  bye,  means  in 
the  Irish  the  beak  of  a  bird." 


78    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


A  solution  that  deals  honestly  and 
justly  with  the  financial  problems  and 
gives  home  rule  to  a  united  Ireland,  will  be 
welcomed  not  merely  in  Ireland  but  in  the 
United  States.  Those  interested  in  Irish 
affairs  in  the  United  States  have  not  been 
appeased  by  the  mere  appointment  of  the 
convention,  for  it  has  come  late  and  after 
many  sad  blunders.  They  are  awaiting 
its  verdict. 


VI 


GEORGE  W.  RUSSELL  (a.  E.) 


T 


HE  author  of  Thoughts  for  a  Con- 
vention is  a  great  Irishman,  In  him 


are  combined  in  a  unique  degree  many  tal- 
ents and  accomplishments.  He  is  an  ar- 
tist of  charm  and  originality,  a  poet  of 
deep  vision  and  beauty,  an  eloquent 
speaker,  a  prose  writer  of  great  distinc- 
tion, an  expert  agricultural  and  coopera- 
tive organizer  and  the  editor  of  The  Irish 
Homestead,  a  weekly  agricultural  paper, 
one  of  the  best  published  in  English.  Like 
his  friend  and  my  friend  William  Butler 
Yeats,  he  delights  to  discover  and  encour- 
age young  poets,  writers  and  artists.  He 
has  been  a  leading  spirit  for  years  in  the 


79 


80    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


Irish  Agricultural  Organization  Society, 
he  is  an  intimate  friend  and  the  righthand 
helper  of  Sir  Horace  Plunkett  in  all  his 
work,  and  a  force  in  contemporary  Ire- 
land.1 His  last  work  The  National  Being 
(Maunsel,  Dublin  1916;  New  York,  The 
Macmillan  Co.)  combines  fine  vision  and 
practical  thought.  A  list  of  his  creative 
works  and  his  other  writings  on  economics 
are  given  in  a  note  below. 

Russell  is  an  Ulster  man  and  a  Protes- 
tant, but  a  member  of  no  political  party. 
It  is  safe  to  say  that  he  knows  Ulster  as 

1  He  is  the  author  of  Homeward:  Songs  by 
the  Way,  1894.  The  Future  of  Ireland  and 
The  Awakening  of  the  Fires,  1897.  Ideals  in 
Ireland:  Priest  or  Hero?,  1897.  The  Earth 
Breath,  1897.  Literary  Ideals  in  Ireland, 
1899  (in  collaboration).  Ideals  in  Ireland, 
1901  (in  collaboration).  The  Nuts  of  Knowl- 
edge, 1903.  Controversy  in  Ireland,  1904. 
The  Divine  Vision,  1904.  The  Mask  of 
Apollo,  1904.    New  Poems,  1904  (edited). 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  81 

well  as  if  not  better  than  Sir  Edward  Car- 
son does.  Indeed  Sir  Edward  Carson  is 
not  an  Ulsterman  at  all.  Russell's 
Thoughts  for  a  Convention  has  had  a 
great  effect  on  Southern  Unionist  and 
Ulster  opinion.  It  first  appeared  in  The 
Irish  Times,  a  Unionist  paper,  and  has 
been  several  times  reprinted.  It  is  the 
best,  the  sanest,  the  most  unbiased  and  at 
the  same  time  the  most  eloquent  discussion 
of  the  general  principles  underlying  the 
Irish  home  rule  question  that  I  have  seen. 
Seldom  have  I  read  a  more  eloquent  and 

By  Still  Waters,  1906.  Some  Irish  Essays, 
1906.  Deirdre  (A  play),  1907.  The  Hero 
in  Man,  1909.  The  Renewal  of  Youth,  1911. 
The  United  Irishwomen,  1912  (in  collabora- 
tion). Co-operation  and  Nationality,  1912. 
The  Rural  Community,  1913.  Collected 
Poems,  1913.  Gods  of  War  and  other  Poems, 
1915.  Imaginations  and  Reveries,  1915;  and 
the  last  and  one  of  his  best  books,  The  Na- 
tional Being  (1916). 


82    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


persuasive  discussion  of  a  great  political 
question.  Plato  could  not  have  done  it 
better  in  the  Athens  of  his  day.  His 
statement  of  the  history,  the  aims  and  the 
achievements  of  the  Unionists,  the  Na- 
tionalists and  the  Sinn  Feiners  is  sympa- 
thetic and  just.  He  explains  from  full 
knowledge  that  the  usual  charge  of  in- 
sincerity against  the  constitutional  Na- 
tionalists is  unjust,  and  he  gives  them  full 
credit  for  the  many  good  measures  won  by 
them  in  their  long  contest.  But  he  points 
out  the  weakness  of  a  constitutional  party 
that  finds  itself  between  two  extreme  par- 
ties, each  of  which  desires  a  settlement  in 
accordance  with  fundamental  principles. 
His  exposition  of  the  Ulster  feeling  is  put 
in  a  way  that  ought  to  touch  the  pride  of, 
and  make  a  strong  appeal  to  all  Irishmen 
of  every  party  and  creed.  How  thin  and 
poor,  in  comparison  with  his  fine  and  ele- 
vated reasoning,  are  the  usual  constitu- 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  88 


tional  arguments!  His  demonstration  of 
the  impracticability  and  impossibility  of  a 
completely  independent  Ireland  is  conclu- 
sive, and,  I  believe,  will  be  agreed  to  by  the 
majority  of  the  extremists  themselves. 
His  demonstration  of  the  necessity  of  a 
complete  separation  of  religion  from  poli- 
tics is  equally  conclusive.  His  argument 
as  to  the  profound  wisdom  of  a  real  settle- 
ment, in  the  interests  not  merely  of  Ire- 
land or  Great  Britain,  but  of  the  whole 
Empire,  is  as  eloquent  as  it  is  wise. 

I  might,  if  I  were  in  the  convention,  not 
hold  out  for  the  complete  exclusion  of 
Irish  members  from  Westminster.  And  I 
cannot  agree  to  his  dictum  that  it  was  the 
question  of  Alsace-Lorraine  that  led  to 
"  the  inevitable  war  93  (paragraph  17). 

The  editor  of  The  Irish  Times  is  quoted 
as  having  said  that  Russell  had  shaken  the 
faith  of  Unionists  in  their  innermost  taber- 
nacles.   It  is  regarded  in  Ireland  as  re- 


84    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


markable  that  such  articles  should  have 
appeared  in  a  Unionist  paper  without  a 
single  letter  of  protest,  whereas  The  Irish 
Times  readers  are  as  a  rule  only  too  ready 
to  rush  into  print  protesting  that  they  will 
never  have  it,  and  so  forth. 

In  The  Nineteenth  Century  for  July, 
1917,  Professor  A.  V.  Dicey,  the  veteran 
opponent  of  home  rule  in  any  form  for 
thirty  years,  had  an  article  entitled  Is  it 
Wise  to  Establish  Home  Rule  Before  the 
End  of  the  War?  The  Professor  referred 
sympathetically  to  Russell's  pamphlet  and 
even  wrote  with  unusual  courtesy  and 
moderation,  for  him,  of  the  Sinn  Feiners. 
Of  Russell's  pamphlet  he  said: 

"  An  Englishman  interested  in  the  home 
rule  question  should  read  with  care 
Thoughts  for  a  Convention  by  A.  E.  (Mr. 
George  Russell),  Maunsel  and  Co.,  Dublin. 
I  have  no  doubt  that  A.  E.  disagrees  with 
all  my  conclusions,  but  his  Memorandum, 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  85 


though  written  from  an  entirely  Irish 
point  of  view,  is  characterized  by  a  noble 
spirit,  and  brings  before  Englishmen  feel- 
ings, thoughts,  and  sometimes  facts  with 
regard  to  Ireland  which  they  are  apt  to 
overlook." 

Twenty  thousand  copies  of  the  pam- 
phlet were  sold  within  a  few  days  after  its 
publication,  which  means  something  in  Ire- 
land, and  The  Irish  Times  itself  has  a 
large  circulation. 

This  would  be  no  place,  even  if  I  were 
able  to  do  it,  to  discuss  the  details  of  the 
problems  before  the  convention.  I  can 
do  no  better  than  to  refer  to  Erskine  Chil- 
ders*  The  Framework  of  Home  Rule  (Lon- 
don: Edward  Arnold,  1911)  for  a  com- 
plete discussion  of  Irish  parliamentary 
history,  the  Grattan  Parliament,  the 
Union,  Canada  and  Ireland,  Australia  and 
Ireland,  South  Africa  and  Ireland,  and 
their  analogies,  the  Ireland  of  today,  the 


86    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


framework  of  home  rule,  the  Union  fi- 
nance, financial  independence,  land  pur- 
chase, and  a  sketch  of  an  Irish  constitu- 
tion. The  lamented  Professor  T.  M. 
Kettle's  little  book  Home  Rule  Finance,  an 
Experiment  in  Justice  (Dublin,  1911)  and 
his  admirally-tempered  book  The  Open 
Secret  of  Ireland  (1912)  are  also  instruc- 
tive. He  had  been  a  member  of  Parlia- 
ment, and  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war  was 
a  professor  in  the  Irish  National  Univer- 
sity. He  entered  the  army,  and,  like  the 
brave  Major  William  Redmond,  was  killed 
a  few  months  ago,  leading  his  Irish  sol- 
diers. 

An  interesting  discussion  of  What  Ire- 
land Wants  appeared  not  long  ago  in 
the  Fortnightly  Review,  July,  1917,  by  Sir 
J.  R.  O'Connell.  He  considers  some  of  the 
fundamental  problems  confronting  the 
convention  and  the  outlook  after  legisla- 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  87 


tive  autonomy  has  been  conferred  upon 
Ireland.  It  is  an  article  that  will  repay 
reading. 

The  article  by  Professor  Dicey  in  The 
Nineteenth  Century,  July,  1917,  above  re- 
ferred to,  is  a  typical  example  of  lawyers' 
special  pleading.  He  argues  at  some 
length  that  the  establishment  of  any  form 
of  home  rule  in  Ireland  would,  during  the 
continuance  of  the  war,  be  a  cause  of  weak- 
ness to  Great  Britain  and  the  British  Em- 
pire, But  the  Professor  seems  to  forget 
that  Bismarck  brought  about  the  union  of 
the  German  kingdoms  into  an  empire  dur- 
ing a  war,  that  Lincoln  emancipated  the 
slaves  in  the  middle  of  the  Civil  War,  and 
that  neither  Bismarck  nor  Lincoln  was  in- 
fluenced by  constitutional  arguments  or 
lawyers'  fears.  The  Professor  gives  an 
interesting  sketch  of  the  three  parties  now 
in  Ireland  —  the  Constitutional  or  Parlia- 


88     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

mentary  Nationalists,  the  Sinn  Feiners 
and  the  Unionists,  and  he  frankly  admits 
that  every  Irish  party  prefers  that  Ire- 
land, whatever  her  relation  to  Great  Brit- 
ain, should  be  administratively  governed 
as  one  country.  The  Professor  gives  a 
peculiar  and  even  amusing  explanation  of 
the  failure  of  the  Asquith-Lloyd  George 
attempt  at  reconciliation  and  settlement  in 
1916,  saying  that  "  Englishmen  cannot 
care  ardently  about  more  than  one  impor- 
tant matter  at  a  time."  He  admits  that 
there  is  a  great  change  of  feeling  among 
Englishmen  toward  the  demand  of  Irish- 
men for  home  rule,  and  gives  his  case  en- 
tirely away  by  stating  that  every  argu- 
ment used  in  his  article  must  be  read  sub- 
ject to  the  limitation  "  that  no  course  of 
action  or  inaction  is  commendable  which 
is  really  opposed  to  the  success  of  Eng- 
land's armies." 

Well,  England  has  spoken.    She  means 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  89 


business  this  time.  The  author  of 
Thoughts  for  a  Convention  has  wisely  and 
justly  said: 

"  The  Premier  of  an  alien  cabinet  has 
declared  that  there  is  no  measure  of  self- 
government  which  Great  Britain  would  not 
assent  to  being  set  up  in  Ireland,  if  Irish- 
men themselves  could  but  come  to  an 
agreement." 

In  justice  to  him,  I  must  also  add  that 
Sir  Edward  Carson  has  seen  the  light  and 
longs  for  "  some  solution  of  that  long- 
continued  Irish  question  that  would  meet 
the  ideal  of  liberty  of  all  the  parties  in 
Ireland."  One  closes  the  review  contain- 
ing Professor  Dicey's  article  without  any 
doubt  what  the  verdict  will  be,  and  it  will 
not  be  such  a  verdict  as  Professor  Dicey, 
whose  views,  I  am  happy  to  believe,  are  not 
now  widely  shared  in  England,  would  ren- 
der. 


VII 


SIR  HORACE  PLUNKETT 

SIR  HORACE  PLUNKETT,  whose 
speech  at  Dundalk,  Ireland,  June  25, 
1917,  is  reprinted  here,  needs  no  introduc- 
tion to  American  readers.  He  is  almost  as 
well  known  in  the  United  States  as  in  Ire- 
land. His  career  as  a  member  of  Par- 
liament, then  as  head  of  the  Irish  Depart- 
ment of  Agriculture  and  Technical  In- 
struction, as  the  founder  and  head  of  the 
Irish  Agricultural  Organization  Society, 
and  his  writings,  need  not  be  dwelt  on 
here.  All  well-wishers  of  Ireland  and  all 
those  who  hope  for  a  satisfactory  and 
honest  solution  of  the  home  rule  question, 
were  glad  to  see  that  Sir  Horace  Plunkett 
had  been  chosen  chairman  of  the  conven- 
90 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  91 

tion.  On  private  as  well  as  public  grounds 
it  was  a  great  satisfaction  to  see  this  rec- 
ognition by  Irishmen  of  one  who  has 
worked  so  honestly  for  the  good  of  Ireland, 
especially  considering  how  badly  he  was 
treated  by  the  Liberal  Government  of  Ire- 
land in  1907-1908.  Those  who  are  inter- 
ested in  the  life-work  of  this  good  Irish- 
man might  read  with  profit  the  book  Sir 
Horace  Plunk ett  and  His  Place  in  the  Irish 
Nation  by  Edward  E.  Lysaght  (Dublin 
and  London  1916).  The  author  of  that 
book  is  also  a  member  of  the  convention. 

Sir  Horace  demonstrates  the  complete 
impracticability  of  the  extremists  who 
dream  that  the  status  and  the  government 
of  Ireland  could  or  would  be  settled  at  the 
peace  conference.  The  convention  is 
Ireland's  peace  conference.  If  the  con- 
vention's work  is  approved  by  Ireland,  as 
I  feel  sure  it  will  be,  there  will  be  no  real 
Irish  question  to  submit  to  the  great  peace 


92    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


conference  that  will  follow  Germany's  sur- 
render. The  temporary  inclusion  of  Ul- 
ster, as  suggested  by  Sir  Horace  Plunkett 
in  his  speech  reprinted  here,  will  not  now 
satisfy.  A  year  ago  it  was  wise  states- 
manship. Today  it  is  not.  There  must 
be  no  division,  nothing  tentative  or  tem- 
porary about  the  settlement. 

Sir  Horace,  at  the  end  of  his  address, 
quotes  from  a  song  —  probably  an  Eng- 
lish song  —  that  he  says  he  remembers 
was  popular  some  fifty  years  ago,  called 
Strangers  Yet.  The  thought  underlying 
the  six  lines  quoted  is  a  fine  one,  but  the 
verse  is  bad  and  sentimental.  The  Gaelic 
League  and  leaders  of  the  Irish  literary 
movement  —  W.  B.  Yeats,  Douglas  Hyde, 
George  Russell,  John  M.  Synge  and 
others  —  have  almost  driven  that  sort  of 
sentimentality  out  of  Ireland.  The  cheap 
rhetoric  and  the  sham  pathos  that  passes 
for  "  eloquence  "  in  some  American-Irish 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  93 


circles  would  simply  not  be  tolerated  in 
Ireland  today.  I  am  sure  Sir  Horace 
would  agree  that  the  following,  from  the 
eloquent  pen  of  the  chivalrous  Captain 
Tom  Kettle,  is  better: 

"  Bond,  from  the  toil  of  hate  we  may  not 
cease : 

Free,  we  are  free  to  be  your  friend. 
But  when  you  make  your  banquet,  and  we 
come, 

Soldier  with  equal  soldier  must  we  sit, 
Closing  a  battle,  not  forgetting  it. 
This  mate  and  mother  of  valiant  rebels  dead 
Must  come  with  all  her  history  on  her  head. 
We  keep  the  past  for  pride. 
Nor  war  nor  peace  shall  strike  our  poets 
dumb: 

No  rawest  squad  of  all  Death's  volunteers, 
No  simplest  man  who  died 
To  tear  your  flag  down,  in  the  bitter  years, 
Btit  shall  have  praise,  and  three  times  thrice 
again, 

When,  at  that  table,  men  shall  drink  with 
men." 


94    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


If  the  convention  should  fail  of  real  re- 
sult, a  generally  accepted  result,  all  well- 
wishers  not  merely  of  Ireland  but  of  the  en- 
tire Allied  cause  will  regret  it. 

My  prediction  is  that  the  convention 
will  agree  and  that  the  country  will 
ratify  its  verdict.  Certainly  nothing 
would  be  more  popular  among  Americans, 
with  their  undoubted  sympathy  for  Ire- 
land's aspirations  for  autonomy,  than  the 
achievement  now  of  a  real  measure  of  home 
rule  —  one  uniting  all  Ireland. 

New  York,  August  28-30,  1917 


THOUGHTS  FOR  A  CONVENTION 
Memorandum  on  the  State  of  Ireland 
By  George  W.  Russell  (A.E.) 


THOUGHTS  FOR  A  CONVENTION 


1%  There  are  moments  in  history  when 
by  the  urgency  of  circumstance  every  one 
in  a  country  is  drawn  from  normal  pur- 
suits to  consider  the  affairs  of  the  nation. 
The  merchant  is  turned  from  his  ware- 
house, the  bookman  from  his  books,  the 
farmer  from  his  fields,  because  they  realize 
that  the  very  foundations  of  the  Society, 
under  whose  shelter  they  were  able  to 
carry  on  their  vocations,  are  being  shaken, 
and  they  can  no  longer  be  voiceless,  or 
leave  it  to  deputies,  unadvised  by  them,  to 
arrange  national  destinies.  We  are  all 
accustomed  to  endure  the  annoyances  and 
irritations  caused  by  legislation  which  is 
not  agreeable  to  us,  and  solace  ourselves 

by  remembering  that  the  things  which 
97 


98    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


really  matter  are  not  affected.  But  when 
the  destiny  of  a  nation,  the  principles  by 
which  life  is  to  be  guided  are  at  stake,  all 
are  on  a  level,  are  equally  affected  and 
are  bound  to  give  expression  to  their  opin- 
ions. Ireland  is  in  one  of  these  moments 
of  history.  Circumstances  with  which  we 
are  all  familiar  and  the  fever  in  which  the 
world  exists  have  infected  it,  and  it  is  like 
molten  metal  the  skilled  political  artificer 
might  pour  into  a  desirable  mould.  But 
if  it  is  not  handled  rightly,  if  any  factor 
is  ignored,  there  may  be  an  explosion 
which  would  bring  on  us  a  fate  as  tragic 
as  anything  in  our  past  history.  Irish- 
men can  no  longer  afford  to  remain  aloof 
from  each  other,  or  to  address  each  other 
distantly  and  defiantly  from  press  or  plat- 
form, but  must  strive  to  understand  each 
other  truly,  and  to  give  due  weight  to  each 
others'  opinions,  and,  if  possible  arrive  at 
a  compromise,  a  balancing  of  their  diver- 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  99 

sities,  which  may  save  our  country  from 
anarchy  and  chaos  for  generations  to 
come. 

%  An  agreement  about  Irish  Govern- 
ment must  be  an  agreement,  not  between 
two  but  three  Irish  parties  first  of  all,  and 
afterwards  with  Great  Britain.  The 
Premier  of  a  coalition  Cabinet  has  declared 
that  there  is  no  measure  of  self  govern- 
ment which  Great  Britain  would  not  as- 
sent to  being  set  up  in  Ireland,  if  Irish- 
men themselves  could  but  come  to  an  agree- 
ment. Before  such  a  compromise  between 
Irish  parties  is  possible  there  must  be  a 
clear  understanding  of  the  ideals  of  these 
parties,  as  they  are  understood  by  them- 
selves, and  not  as  they  are  presented  in 
party  controversy  by  special  pleaders 
whose  object  too  often  is  to  pervert  or  dis- 
credit the  principles  and  actions  of  op- 
ponents, a  thing  which  is  easy  to  do  be- 
cause all  parties,  even  the  noblest,  have 


100    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

followers  who  do  them  disservice  by  igno- 
rant advocacy  or  excited  action.  If  we 
are  to  unite  Ireland  we  can  only  do  so  by 
recognising  what  truly  are  the  principles 
each  party  stands  for,  and  will  not  for- 
sake, and  for  which  if  necessary  they  will 
risk  life.  True  understanding  is  to  see 
ideals  as  they  are  held  by  men  between 
themselves  and  Heaven;  and  in  this  mood 
I  will  try,  first  of  all,  to  understand  the 
position  of  Unionists,  Sinn  Feiners  and 
Constitutional  Nationalists  as  they  have 
been  explained  to  me  by  the  best  minds 
among  them,  those  who  have  induced 
others  of  their  countrymen  to  accept  those 
ideals.  When  this  is  done  we  will  see  if 
compromise,  a  balancing  of  diversities,  be 
not  possible  in  an  Irish  State  where  all 
that  is  essential  in  these  varied  ideals  may 
be  harmonized  and  retained. 

3.  I  will  take  first  of  all  the  position  of 
Unionists.    They  are,  many  of  them,  the 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  101 


descendants  of  settlers  who,  by  their  en- 
trance into  Ireland  broke  up  the  Gaelic 
uniformity  and  introduced  the  speech,  the 
thoughts  characteristic  of  another  race. 
While  they  have  grown  to  love  their  coun- 
try as  much  as  any  of  Gaelic  origin,  and 
their  peculiarities  have  been  modified  by 
centuries  of  life  in  Ireland  and  by  inter- 
marriage, so  that  they  are  much  more  akin 
to  their  fellow-countrymen  in  mind  and 
manner  than  they  are  to  any  other  peo- 
ple, they  still  retain  habits,  beliefs  and 
traditions  from  which  they  will  not  part. 
They  form  a  class  economically  powerful. 
They  have  openness  and  energy  of  charac- 
ter, great  organizing  power  and  a  mastery 
over  materials,  all  qualities  invaluable  in 
an  Irish  State.  In  North-East  Ulster 
where  they  are  most  homogeneous  they 
conduct  the  affairs  of  their  cities  with 
great  efficiency,  carrying  on  an  interna- 
tional trade  not  only  with  Great  Britain 


BOSTON  COLLEGE  LIBRARY 
CHESTNUT  HILL,  MASS* 


102    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


but  with  the  rest  of  the  world.  They  have 
made  these  industries  famous.  They  be- 
lieve that  their  prosperity  is  in  large  meas- 
ure due  to  their  acceptance  of  the  Union, 
that  it  would  be  lessened  if  they  threw  in 
their  lot  with  the  other  Ireland  and  ac- 
cepted its  ideals,  that  business  which  now 
goes  to  their  shipyards  and  factories  would 
cease  if  they  were  absorbed  in  a  self-gov- 
erning Ireland  whose  spokesmen  had  an 
unfortunate  habit  of  nagging  their  neigh- 
bours and  of  conveying  the  impression  that 
they  are  inspired  by  race  hatred.  They 
believe  that  an  Irish  legislature  would  be 
controlled  by  a  majority,  representatives 
mainly  of  small  farmers,  men  who  had  no 
knowledge  of  affairs,  or  of  the  peculiar 
needs  of  Ulster  industry,  or  the  intricacy 
of  the  problems  involved  in  carrying  on  an 
international  trade;  that  the  religious 
ideas  of  the  majority  would  be  so  favoured 
in  education  and  government  that  the  fav- 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  103 


ouritism  would  amount  to  religious  oppres- 
sion. They  are  also  convinced  that  no 
small  country  in  the  present  state  of  the 
world  can  really  be  independent,  that  such 
only  exist  by  sufferance  of  their  mighty 
neighbours,  and  must  be  subserrient  in 
trade  policy  and  military  policy  to  retain 
even  a  nominal  freedom;  and  that  an  in- 
dependent Ireland  would  by  its  position  be 
a  focus  for  the  intrigues  of  powers  hostile 
to  Great  Britain,  and  if  it  achieved  inde- 
pendence Great  Britain  in  self  protection 
would  be  forced  to  conquer  it  again.  They 
consider  that  security  for  industry  and 
freedom  for  the  individual  can  best  be  pre- 
served in  Ireland  by  the  maintenance  of  the 
Union,  and  that  the  world  spirit  is  with 
the  great  empires. 

4.  The  second  political  group  may  be 
described  as  the  spiritual  inheritors  of  the 
more  ancient  race  in  Ireland.  They  re- 
gard the  preservation  of  their  nationality 


104?    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

as  a  sacred  charge,  themselves  as  a  con- 
quered people  owing  no  allegiance  to  the 
dominant  race.  They  cannot  be  called 
traitors  to  it  because  neither  they  nor  their 
predecessors  have  ever  admitted  the  right 
of  another  people  to  govern  them  against 
their  will.  They  are  inspired  by  an  an- 
cient history,  a  literature  stretching  be- 
yond the  Christian  era,  a  national  culture 
and  distinct  national  ideals  which  they  de- 
sire to  manifest  in  a  civilization  which  shall 
not  be  an  echo  or  imitation  of  any  other. 
While  they  do  not  depreciate  the  worth  of 
English  culture  or  its  political  system  they 
are  as  angry  at  its  being  imposed  on  them 
as  a  young  man  with  a  passion  for  art 
would  be  if  his  guardian  insisted  on  his 
adopting  another  profession  and  denied 
him  any  chance  of  manifesting  his  own 
genius.  Few  hatreds  equal  those  caused 
by  the  denial  or  obstruction  of  national 
aptitudes.    Many  of  those  who  fought  in 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  105 


the  last  Irish  insurrection  were  fighters  not 
merely  for  a  political  change  but  were 
rather  desperate  and  despairing  champions 
of  a  culture  which  they  held  was  being 
stifled  from  infancy  in  Irish  children  in  the 
schools  of  the  nation.  They  believe  that 
the  national  genius  cannot  manifest  itself 
in  a  civilization  and  is  not  allowed  to  mani- 
fest itself  while  the  Union  persists.  They 
wish  Ireland  to  be  as  much  itself  as  Japan, 
and  as  free  to  make  its  own  choice  of  politi- 
cal principles,  its  culture  and  social  order, 
and  to  develop  its  industries  unfettered  by 
the  trade  policy  of  their  neighbours. 
Their  mood  is  unconquerable,  and  while 
often  overcome  it  has  emerged  again  and 
again  in  Irish  history,  and  it  has  perhaps 
more  adherents  to-day  that  at  any  period 
since  the  Act  of  Union,  and  this  has  been 
helped  on  by  the  incarnation  of  the  Gaelic 
spirit  in  modern  Anglo-Irish  literature, 
and  a  host  of  brilliant  poets,  dramatists 


106    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


and  prose  writers  who  have  won  interna- 
tional recognition,  and  have  increased  the 
dignity  of  spirit  and  the  self-respect  of 
the  followers  of  this  tradition.  They 
assert  that  the  Union  kills  the  soul  of 
the  people;  that  empires  do  not  permit  the 
intensive  cultivation  of  human  life:  that 
they  destroy  the  richness  and  variety 
of  existence  by  the  extinction  of  peculiar 
and  unique  gifts,  and  the  substitution 
therefor  of  a  culture  which  has  its  value 
mainly  for  the  people  who  created  it, 
but  is  as  alien  to  our  race  as  the 
mood  of  the  scientist  is  to  the  artist 
or  poet. 

6.  The  third  group  occupies  a  middle 
position  between  those  who  desire  the  per^- 
fecting  of  the  Union  and  those  whose 
claim  is  for  complete  independence:  and 
because  they  occupy  a  middle  position, 
and  have  taken  colouring  from  the  ex- 
tremes between  which  they  exist  they  have 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  107 


been  exposed  to  the  charge  of  insincerity, 
which  is  unjust  so  far  as  the  best  minds 
among  them  are  concerned.  They  have 
aimed  at  a  middle  course,  not  going  far 
enough  on  one  side  or  another  to  secure 
the  confidence  of  the  extremists.  They 
have  sought  to  maintain  the  connexion 
with  the  empire,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
acquire  an  Irish  control  over  administra- 
tion and  legislation.  They  have  been 
more  practical  than  ideal,  and  to  their 
credit  must  be  placed  the  organizing  of 
the  movements  which  secured  most  of  the 
reforms  in  Ireland  since  the  Union,  such 
as  religious  equality,  the  acts  securing  to 
farmers  fair  rents  and  fixity  of  tenure, 
I  the  wise  and  salutary  measures  making 
possible  the  transfer  of  land  from  land- 
lord to  tenant,  facilities  for  education  at 
popular  universities,  the  labourers'  acts 
and  many  others.  They  are  a  practical 
party  taking  what  they  could  get,  and 


108    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

because  they  could  show  ostensible  results 
they  have  had  a  greater  following  in  Ire- 
land than  any  other  party.  This  is  nat- 
ural because  the  average  man  in  all  coun- 
tries is  a  realist.  But  this  reliance  on 
material  results  to  secure  support  meant 
that  they  must  always  show  results,  or 
the  minds  of  their  countrymen  veered  to 
those  ultimates  and  fundamentals  which 
await  settlement  here  as  they  do  in  all 
civilizations.  As  in  the  race  with  Atal- 
anta  the  golden  apples  had  to  be  thrown 
in  order  to  win  the  race.  The  intellect 
of  Ireland  is  now  fixed  on  fundamentals, 
and  the  compromise  this  middle  party  is 
able  to  offer  does  not  make  provision  for 
the  ideals  of  either  of  the  extremists,  and 
indeed  meets  little  favour  anywhere  in  a 
country  excited  by  recent  events  in  world 
history,  where  revolutionary  changes  are 
expected  and  a  settlement  far  more  in  ac- 
cord with  fundamental  principles. 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  109 


6.  It  is  possible  that  many  of  the  rank 
and  file  of  these  parties  will  not  at  first 
agree  with  the  portraits  painffed  of  their 
opponents,  and  that  is  because  the  special 
pleaders  of  the  press,  who  in  Ireland  are, 
as  a  rule,  allowed  little  freedom  to  state 
private  convictions,  have  come  to  regard 
themselves  as  barristers  paid  to  conduct  a 
case,  and  have  acquired  the  habit  of  isolat- 
ing particular  events,  the  hasty  speech  or 
violent  action  of  individuals  in  localities, 
and  of  exhibiting  these  as  indicating  the 
whole  character  of  the  party  attacked. 
They  misrepresent  Irishmen  to  each  other. 
The  Ulster  advocates  of  the  Union,  for 
example,  are  accustomed  to  hear  from 
^  their  advisers  that  the  favourite  employ- 
ment of  Irish  farmers  in  the  three  south- 
ern provinces  is  cattle  driving,  if  not 
worse.  They  are  told  that  Protestants 
in  these  provinces  live  in  fear  of  their 
lives,  whereas  anybody  who  has  knowledge 


110    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

of  the  true  conditions  know  that,  so  far 
from  being  riotous  and  unbusinesslike,  the 
farmers  in  these  provinces  have  developed 
a  network  of  rural  associations,  dairies, 
bafcon  factories,  agricultural  and  poultry 
societies,  etc.,  doing  their  business  effi- 
ciently, applying  the  teachings  of  science 
in  their  factories,  competing  in  quality  of 
output  with  the  very  best  of  the  same  class 
of  society  in  Ulster  and  obtaining  as  good 
prices  in  the  same  market.  As  a  matter 
of  fact  this  method  of  organization  now 
largely  adopted  by  Ulster  farmers  was 
initiated  in  the  South.  In  the  charge  of 
intolerance  I  do  not  believe.  Here,  as 
in  all  other  countries,  there  are  unfor- 
tunate souls  obsessed  by  dark  powers, 
whose  human  malignity  takes  the  form 
of  religious  hatreds,  but  I  believe,  and 
the  thousands  of  Irish  Protestants  in 
the  Southern  Counties  will  affirm  it  as 
true,  that  they  have  nothing  to  complain 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  111 

of  in  this  respect.  I  am  sure  that  in  this 
matter  of  religious  tolerance  these  prov- 
inces can  stand  favourable  comparison 
with  any  country  in  the  world  where  there 
are  varieties  of  religions,  even  with  Great 
Britain.  I  would  plead  with  my  Ulster 
compatriots  not  to  gaze  too  long  or  too 
credulously  into  that  distorting  mirror 
held  up  to  them,  nor  be  tempted  to  take 
individual  action  as  representative  of  the 
mass.  How  would  they  like  to  have  the 
depth  or  quality  of  spiritual  life  in  their 
great  city  represented  by  the  scrawlings 
and  revilings  about  the  head  of  the  Cath- 
olic Church  to  be  found  occasionally  on 
the  blank  walls  of  Belfast?  If  the  same 
method  of  distortion  by  selection  of  facts 
was  carried  out  there  is  not  a  single  city 
or  nation  which  could  not  be  made  to  ap- 
pear baser  than  Sodom  or  Gomorrah  and 
as  deserving  of  their  fate. 

7.  The  Ulster  character  is  better  ap- 


112    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


predated  by  Southern  Ireland,  and  there 
is  little  reason  to  vindicate  it  against  any 
charges  except  the  slander  that  Ulster 
Unionists  do  not  regard  themselves  as 
Irishmen,  and  that  they  have  no  love  for 
their  own  country.  Their  position  is 
that  they  are  Unionists,  not  merely  be- 
cause it  is  for  the  good  of  Great  Britain, 
but  because  they  hold  it  to  be  for  the  good 
of  Ireland,  and  it  is  the  Irish  argument 
weighs  with  them,  and  if  they  were  con- 
vinced it  would  be  better  for  Ireland  to  be 
self-governed  they  would  throw  in  their 
lot  with  the  rest  of  Ireland,  which  would 
accept  them  gladly  and  greet  them  as  a 
prodigal  son  who  had  returned,  having 
made,  unlike  most  prodigal  sons,  a  for- 
tune, and  well  able  to  be  the  wisest  adviser 
in  family  affairs.  It  is  necessary  to  pref- 
ace what  I  have  to  say  by  way  of  argu- 
ment or  remonstrance  to  Irish  parties  by 
words  making  it  clear  that  I  write  without 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  113 


prejudice  against  any  party,  and  that  I 
do  not  in  the  least  underestimate  their 
good  qualities  or  the  weight  to  be  attached 
to  their  opinions  and  ideals.  It  is  the 
traditional  Irish  way,  which  we  have  too 
often  forgotten,  to  notice  the  good  in  the 
opponent  before  battling  with  what  is  evil. 
So  Maeve,  the  ancient  Queen  of  Connacht, 
looking  over  the  walls  of  her  city  of 
Cruachan  at  the  Ulster  foemen,  said  of 
them,  "  Noble  and  regal  is  their  appear- 
ance," and  her  own  followers  said,  "  Noble 
and  regal  are  those  of  whom  you  speak." 
When  we  lost  the  old  Irish  culture  we  lost 
the  tradition  of  courtesy  to  each  other 
which  lessens  the  difficulties  of  life  and 
makes  it  possible  to  conduct  controversy 
without  ^creating  bitter  memories. 

8.  I  desire  first  to  argue  with  Irish 
Unionists  whether  it  is  accurate  to  say  of 
them,  as  it  would  appear  to  be  from  their 
spokesmen,  that  the  principle  of  national- 


114     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

ity  cannot  be  recognized  by  them  or  al- 
lowed to  take  root  in  the  commonwealth 
of  dominions  which  form  the  Empire. 
Must  one  culture  only  exist?  Must  all 
citizens  have  their  minds  poured  into  the 
same  mould,  and  varieties  of  gifts  and 
cultural  traditions  be  extinguished? 
What  would  India  with  its  myriad  races 
say  to  that  theory?  What  would  Canada 
enclosing  in  its  dominion  and  cherishing 
a  French  Canadian  nation  say?  Union- 
ists have  by  every  means  in  their  power 
discouraged  the  study  of  the  national  lit- 
erature of  Ireland  though  it  is  one  of  the 
most  ancient  in  Europe,  though  the  schol- 
ars of  France  and  Germany  have  founded 
journals  for  its  study,  and  its  beauty  is 
being  recognized  by  all  who  have  read  it. 
It  contains  the  race  memory  of  Ireland, 
its  imaginations  and  thoughts  for  two 
thousand  years.  Must  that  be  obliter- 
ated?   Must  national  character  be  steril- 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  115 


ized  of  all  taint  of  its  peculiar  beauty? 
Must  Ireland  have  no  character  of  its 
own  but  be  servilely  imitative  of  its  neigh- 
bour in  all  things  and  be  nothing  of  itself? 
It  is  objected  that  the  study  of  Irish  his- 
tory, Irish  literature  and  the  national  cul- 
ture generates  hostility  to  the  Empire. 
Is  that  a  true  psychological  analysis? 
Is  it  not  true  in  all  human  happenings 
that  if  people  are  denied  what  is  right  and 
natural  they  will  instantly  assume  an  at- 
titude of  hostility  to  the  power  which 
denies?  The  hostility  is  not  inherent  in 
the  subject  but  is  evoked  by  the  denial. 
I  put  it  to  my  Unionist  compatriots  that 
the  ideal  is  to  aim  at  a  diversity  of  cul- 
ture, and  the  greatest  freedom,  richness 
and  variety  of  thought.  The  more  this 
richness  and  variety  prevail  in  a  nation 
the  less  likelihood  is  there  of  the  tyranny 
of  one  culture  over  the  rest.  We  should 
aim  in  Ireland  at  that  freedom  of  the  an- 


116     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

cient  Athenians,  who,  as  Pericles  said, 
listened  gladly  to  the  opinions  of  others 
and  did  not  turn  sour  faces  on  those  who 
disagreed  with  them.  A  culture  which  is 
allowed  essential  freedom  to  develop  will 
soon  perish  if  it  does  not  in  itself  contain 
the  elements  of  human  worth  which  make 
for  immortality.  The  world  has  to  its 
sorrow  many  instances  of  freak  religions 
which  were  persecuted  and  so  by  natural 
opposition  were  perpetuated  and  hard- 
ened in  belief.  We  should  allow  the  great- 
est freedom  in  respect  of  cultural  develop- 
ments in  Ireland  so  that  the  best  may 
triumph  by  reason  of  superior  beauty  and 
not  because  the  police  are  relied  upon  to 
maintain  one  culture  in  a  dominant  posi- 
tion. 

9.  I  have  also  an  argument  to  address 
to  the  extremists  whose  claim,  uttered 
lately  with  more  openness  and  vehemence, 
is  for  the  complete  independence  of  the 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  117 

whole  of  Ireland,  who  cry  out  against 
partition,  who  will  not  have  a  square  mile 
of  Irish  soil  subject  to  foreign  rule.  That 
implies  they  desire  the  inclusion  of  Ulster 
and  the  inhabitants  of  Ulster  in  their 
Irish  State.  I  tell  them  frankly  that  if 
they  expect  Ulster  to  throw  its  lot  in 
with  a  self-governing  Ireland  they  must 
remain  within  the  commonwealth  of  do- 
minions which  constitute  the  Empire,  be 
prepared  loyally,  once  Ireland  has  com- 
plete control  over  its  internal  affairs,  to 
accept  the  status  of  a  dominion  and  the 
responsibilities  of  that  wider  union.  If 
the}'  will  not  accept  that  status  as  the 
Boers  did,  they  will  never  draw  that  im- 
portant and  powerful  Irish  party  into  an 
Irish  State  except  by  force,  and  do  they 
think  there  is  any  possibility  of  that?  It 
is  extremely  doubtful  whether  if  the 
world  stood  aloof,  and  allowed  Irishmen 
to  fight  out  their  own  quarrels  among 


118    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

themselves,  that  the  fighters  for  complete 
independence  could  conquer  a  community 
so  numerous,  so  determined,  so  wealthy, 
so  much  more  capable  of  providing  for 
themselves  the  plentiful  munitions  by 
which  alone  one  army  can  hope  to  conquer 
another.  In  South  Africa  men  who  had 
fiercer  traditional  hostilities  than  Irish- 
men of  different  parties  here  have  had, 
who  belonged  to  different  races,  who  had 
a  few  years  before  been  engaged  in  a  racial 
war,  were  great  enough  to  rise  above  these 
past  antagonizms,  to  make  an  agreement 
and  abide  faithfully  by  it.  Is  the  same 
magnanimity  not  possible  in  Ireland?  I 
say  to  my  countrymen  who  cry  out  for 
the  complete  separation  of  Ireland  from 
the  Empire  that  they  will  not  in  this  gen- 
eration bring  with  them  the  most  power- 
ful and  wealthy,  if  not  the  most  numerous, 
party  in  their  country.  Complete  con- 
trol of  Irish  affairs  is  a  possibility,  and  I 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  119 

suggest  to  the  extremists  that  the  status 
of  a  self-governing  dominion  inside  a  fed- 
eration of  dominions  is  a  proposal  which, 
if  other  safeguards  for  minority  interests 
are  incorporated,  would  attract  Union- 
ist attention.  But  if  these  men  who  de- 
pend so  much  in  their  economic  enter- 
prises upon  a  friendly  relation  with  their 
largest  customers  are  to  be  allured  into  a 
self-governing  Ireland  there  must  be  ac- 
ceptance of  the  Empire  as  an  essential 
condition.  The  Boers  found  it  not  im- 
possible to  accept  this  status  for  the  sake 
of  a  United  South  Africa.  Are  our  Irish 
Boers  not  prepared  to  make  a  compromise 
and  abide  by  it  loyally  for  the  sake  of  a 
united  Ireland? 

10.  A  remonstrance  must  also  be  ad- 
dressed to  the  middle  party  in  that  it  has 
made  no  real  effort  to  understand  and  con- 
ciliate the  feelings  of  Irish  Unionists. 
They  have  indeed  made  promises,  no  doubt 


120     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


sincerely,  but  they  have  undone  the  effect 
of  all  they  said  by  encouraging  of  recent 
years  the  growth  of  sectarian  organiza- 
tions with  political  aims  and  have  relied 
on  these  as  on  a  party  machine.  It  may 
be  said  that  in  Ulster  a  similar  organiza- 
tion, sectarian  with  political  objects,  has 
long  existed,  and  that  this  justified  a 
counter  organization.  Both  in  my  opin- 
ion are  unjustifiable  and  evil,  but  the 
backing  of  such  an  organization  was 
specially  foolish  in  the  case  of  the  major- 
ity, whose  main  object  ought  to  be  to  al- 
lure the  minority  into  the  same  political 
fold.  The  baser  elements  in  society,  the 
intriguers,  the  job-seekers,  and  all  who 
would  acquire  by  influence  what  they  can- 
not attain  by  merit,  flock  into  such  bodies, 
and  create  a  sinister  impression  as  to  their 
objects  and  deliberations.  If  we  are  to 
have  national  concord  among  Irishmen, 
religion  must  be  left  to  the  Churches  whose 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  121 


duty  it  is  to  promote  it,  and  be  dissevered 
from  party  politics,  and  it  should  be  re- 
garded as  contrary  to  national  idealism 
to  organize  men  of  one  religion  into  secret 
societies  with  political  or  economic  aims. 
So  shall  be  left  to  Caesar  the  realm  which 
is  Caesar's,  and  it  shall  not  appear  part  of 
the  politics  of  eternity  that  Michael's 
sister's  son  obtains  a  particular  post  be- 
ginning at  thirty  shillings  a  week.  I  am 
not  certain  that  it  should  not  be  an  es- 
sential condition  of  any  Irish  settlement 
that  all  such  sectarian  organizations 
should  be  disbanded  in  so  far  as  their  ob- 
jects are  political,  and  remain  solely  as 
friendly  societies.  It  is  useless  assuring 
a  minority  already  suspicious,  of  the  tol- 
erance it  may  expect  from  the  majority, 
if  the  party  machine  of  the  majority  is 
sectarian  and  semi-secret,  if  no  one  of  the 
religion  of  the  minority  may  join  it,  I 
believe  in  spite  of  the  recent  growth  of 


122    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


sectarian  societies  that  it  has  affected  but 
little  the  general  tolerant  spirit  in  Ire- 
land, and  where  evils  have  appeared  they 
have  speedily  resulted  in  the  break  up  of 
the  organization  in  the  locality.  Irish- 
men individually  as  a  rule  are  much  nobler 
in  spirit  than  the  political  organizations 
they  belong  to. 

11.  It  is  necessary  to  speak  with  the 
utmost  frankness  and  not  to  slur  over  any 
real  difficulty  in  the  way  of  a  settlement. 
Irish  parties  must  rise  above  themselves 
if  they  are  to  bring  about  an  Irish  unity. 
They  appear  on  the  surface  unreconcil- 
able,  but  that,  in  my  opinion,  is  because 
the  spokesmen  of  parties  are  under  the 
illusion  that  they  should  never  indicate  in 
public  that  they  might  possibly  abate  one 
jot  of  the  claims  of  their  party.  A 
crowd  or  organization  is  often  more  ex- 
treme than  its  individual  members.  I 
have  spoken  to  Unionists  and  Sinn  Feiners 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  123 


and  find  them  as  reasonable  in  private  as 
they  are  unreasonable  in  public.  I  am 
convinced  that  an  immense  relief  would  be 
felt  by  all  Irishmen  if  a  real  settlement  of 
the  Irish  question  could  be  arrived  at,  a 
compromise  which  would  reconcile  them  to 
living  under  one  government,  and  would 
at  the  same  time  enable  us  to  live  at  peace 
with  our  neighbours.  The  suggestions 
which  follow  were  the  result  of  discussions 
between  a  group  of  Unionists,  National- 
ists and  Sinn  Feiners,  and  as  they  found 
it  possible  to  agree  upon  a  compromise  it 
is  hoped  that  the  policy  which  harmonized 
their  diversities  may  help  to  bring  about 
a  similar  result  in  Ireland, 

12.  I  may  now  turn  to  consider  the 
Anglo-Irish  problem  and  to  make  specific 
suggestions  for  its  solution  and  the  char- 
acter of  the  government  to  be  established 
in  Ireland.  The  factors  are  triple. 
There  is  first  the  desire  many  centuries 


124    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


old  of  Irish  nationalists  for  self-govern- 
ment and  the  political  unity  of  the  peo- 
ple: secondly,  there  is  the  problem  of  the 
Unionists  who  require  that  the  self-gov- 
erning Ireland  they  enter  shall  be  friendly 
to  the  imperial  connection,  and  that  their 
religious  and  economic  interests  shall  be 
safeguarded  by  real  and  not  merely  by 
verbal  guarantees;  and,  thirdly,  there  is 
the  position  of  Great  Britain  which  re- 
quires, reasonably  enough,  that  any  self- 
governing  dominion  set  up  alongside  it 
shall  be  friendly  to  the  empire.  In  this 
matter  Great  Britain  has  priority  of 
claim  to  consideration,  for  it  has  first  pro- 
posed a  solution,  the  Home  Rule  Act 
which  is  on  the  Statute  Book,  though  later 
variants  of  that  have  been  outlined  be- 
cause of  the  attitude  of  Unionists  in 
North-East  Ulster,  variants  which  sug- 
gest the  partition  of  Ireland,  the  elimina- 
tion of  six  counties  from  the  area  con- 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  125 

trolled  by  the  Irish  government.  This 
Act,  or  the  variants  of  it  offered  to  Ire- 
land, is  the  British  contribution  to  the 
settlement  of  the  Anglo-Irish  problem. 

13.  If  it  is  believed  that  this  scheme, 
or  any  diminutive  of  it,  will  settle  the 
Anglo-Irish  problem,  British  statesmen 
and  people  who  trust  them  are  only  pre- 
paring for  themselves  bitter  disappoint- 
ment. I  believe  that  nothing  less  than 
complete  self-government  has  ever  been 
the  object  of  Irish  Nationalism.  How- 
ever ready  certain  sections  have  been  to 
accept  instalments,  no  Irish  political 
leader  ever  had  authority  to  pledge  his 
countrymen  to  accept  a  half  measure  as 
a  final  settlement  of  the  Irish  claim.  The 
Home  Rule  Act,  if  put  into  operation  to- 
morrow, even  if  Ulster  were  cajoled  or 
coerced  into  accepting  it,  would  not  be 
regarded  by  Irish  Nationalists  as  a  final 
settlement,  no  matter  what  may  be  said  at 


126    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

Westminster.  Nowhere  in  Ireland  has  it 
been  accepted  as  final.  Received  without 
enthusiasm  at  first,  every  year  which  has 
passed  since  the  Bill  was  introduced  has 
seen  the  system  of  self-government  formu- 
lated there  subjected  to  more  acute  and 
hostile  criticism:  and  I  believe  it  would 
be  perfectly  accurate  to  say  that  its  pass- 
ing to-morrow  would  only  be  the  prelimi- 
nary for  another  agitation,  made  fiercer  by 
the  unrest  of  the  world,  where  revolutions 
and  the  upsetting  of  dynasties  are  in  the 
air,  and  where  the  claims  of  nationalities 
no  more  ancient  than  the  Irish,  like  the 
Poles,  the  Finns,  and  the  Arabs,  to  po- 
litical freedom  are  admitted  by  the  spokes- 
men of  the  great  powers,  Great  Britain, 
included,  or  are  already  conceded.  If 
any  partition  of  Ireland  is  contemplated, 
this  will  intensify  the  bitterness  now  ex- 
isting. I  believe  it  is  to  the  interest  of 
Great  Britain  to  settle  the  Anglo-Irish 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  127 

dispute.  It  has  been  countered  in  many 
of  its  policies  in  America  and  the  Colonies 
by  the  vengeful  feelings  of  Irish  exiles. 
There  may  yet  come  a  time  when  the  re- 
fusal of  the  Irish  mouse  to  gnaw  at  a  net 
spread  about  the  lion  may  bring  about  the 
downfall  of  the  empire.  It  cannot  be  to 
the  interest  of  Great  Britain  to  have  on 
its  flank  some  millions  of  people  who, 
whenever  Great  Britain  is  engaged  in  a 
war  which  threatens  its  existence,  feel  a 
thrill  running  through  them,  as  prisoners 
do  hearing  the  guns  sounding  closer  of  an 
army  which  comes,  as  they  think,  to  liber- 
ate them.  Nations  denied  essential  free- 
dom ever  feel  like  that  when  the  power 
which  dominates  them  is  itself  in  peril. 
Who  can  doubt  but  for  the  creation  of 
Dominion  Government  in  South  Africa 
that  the  present  war  would  have  found 
the  Boers  thirsty  for  revenge,  and  the 
Home  Government  incapable  of  dealing 


128     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


with  a  distant  people  who  taxed  its  re- 
sources but  a  few  years  previous?  I  have 
no  doubt  that  if  Ireland  was  granted  the 
essential  freedom  and  wholeness  in  its  po- 
litical life  it  desires,  its  mood  also  would 
be  turned.  I  have  no  feelings  of  race 
hatred,  no  exultation  in  thought  of  the 
downfall  of  any  race ;  but  as  a  close  ob- 
server of  the  mood  of  millions  in  Ireland, 
I  feel  certain  that  if  their  claim  is  not  met 
they  will  brood  and  scheme  and  wait  to 
strike  a  blow;  though  the  dream  may  be 
handed  on  from  them  to  their  children  and 
their  children's  children,  yet  they  will 
hope,  sometime,  to  give  the  last  vengeful 
thrust  of  enmity  at  the  stricken  heart  of 
the  empire. 

14.  Any  measure  which  is  not  a  settle- 
ment, which  leaves  Ireland  still  actively 
discontented  is  a  waste  of  effort,  and  the 
sooner  English  statesmen  realize  the  futil- 
ity of  half-measures  the  better.    A  man 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  129 


who  claims  a  debt  he  believes  is  due  to  him, 
who  is  offered  half  of  it  in  payment,  is 
not  going  to  be  conciliated  or  be  one  iota 
more  friendly,  if  he  knows  that  the  other 
is  able  to  pay  the  full  amount  and  it  could 
be  yielded  without  detriment  to  the  donor. 
Ireland  will  never  be  content  with  a  system 
of  self-government  which  lessens  its  repre- 
sentation in  the  Imperial  Parliament,  and 
still  retains  for  that  Parliament  control 
over  all-important  matters  like  taxation 
and  trade  policy.  Whoever  controls 
these  controls  the  character  of  an  Irish 
civilization,  and  the  demand  of  Ireland  is 
not  merely  for  administrative  powers,  but 
the  power  to  fashion  its  own  national  pol- 
icy, and  to  build  up  a  civilization  of  its 
own  with  an  economic  character  in  keep- 
ing by  self-devised  and  self-checked  ef- 
forts. To  misunderstand  this  is  to  sup- 
pose there  is  no  such  thing  as  national 
idealism,  and  that  a  people  will  accept  sub- 


130     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


stitutes  for  the  principle  of  nationality, 
whereas  the  past  history  of  the  world  and 
present  circumstance  in  Europe  is  evi- 
dence that  nothing  is  more  unconquerable 
and  immortal  than  national  feeling,  and 
that  it  emerges  from  centuries  of  alien 
government,  and  is  ready  at  any  time  to 
flare  out  in  insurrection.  At  no  period  in 
Irish  history  was  that  sentiment  more 
self-conscious  than  it  is  to-day. 

15.  Nationalist  Ireland  requires  that 
the  Home  Rule  Act  should  be  radically 
changed  to  give  Ireland  unfettered  con- 
trol over  taxation,  customs,  excise  and 
trade  policy.  These  powers  are  at  pres- 
ent denied,  and  if  the  Act  were  in  opera- 
tion, Irish  people  instead  of  trying  to 
make  the  best  of  it,  would  begin  at  once 
to  use  whatever  powers  they  had  as  a 
lever  to  gain  the  desired  control,  and  this 
would  lead  to  fresh  antagonism  and  a 
prolonged  struggle  between  the  two  coun- 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  131 


tries,  and  in  this  last  effort  Irish  Na- 
tionalists would  have  the  support  of  that 
wealthy  class  now  Unionist  in  the  three 
southern  provinces,  and  also  in  Ulster  if 
it  were  included,  for  they  would  then  de- 
sire as  much  as  Nationalists  that,  while 
they  live  in  a  self-governing  Ireland,  the 
powers  of  the  Irish  Government  should  be 
such  as  would  enable  it  to  build  up  Irish 
industries  by  an  Irish  trade  policy,  and 
to  impose  taxation  in  a  way  to  suit  Irish 
conditions.  As  the  object  of  British  con- 
sent to  Irish  self-government  is  to  dispose 
of  Irish  antagonism  nothing  is  to  be 
gained  by  passing  measures  which  will  not 
dispose  of  it.  The  practically  unanimous 
claim  of  Nationalists  as  exhibited  in  the 
press  in  Ireland  is  for  the  status  and  pow-  ,t 
ers  of  economic  control  possessed  by  the 
self-governing  dominions.  By  this  alone 
will  the  causes  of  friction  between  the  two 
nations  be  removed,  and  a  real  solidarity 


132     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


of  interest  based  on  a  federal  union  for 
joint  defence  of  the  freedom  and  well-being 
of  the  federated  communities  be  possible, 
and  I  have  no  doubt  it  would  take  place. 
I  do  not  believe  that  hatreds  remain  for 
long  among  people  when  the  causes  which 
created  them  are  removed.  We  have  seen 
in  Europe  and  in  the  dominions  the  con- 
tinual reversals  of  feeling  which  have  taken 
place  when  a  sore  has  been  removed.  An- 
tagonisms are  replaced  by  alliances.  It 
is  mercifully  true  of  human  nature  that  it 
prefers  to  exercise  goodwill  to  hatred  when 
it  can,  and  the  common  sense  of  the  best  in 
Ireland  would  operate,  once  there  was  no 
longer  interference  in  our  internal  affairs, 
to  allay  and  keep  in  order  these  turbulent 
elements  which  exist  in  every  country,  but 
which  only  become  a  danger  to  society 
when  real  grievances  based  on  the  viola- 
tion of  true  principles  of  government  are 
present. 


The  Irish  Home-Rale  Convention  133 


16.  The  Union  has  failed  absolutely  to 
conciliate  Ireland.  Every  generation 
there  have  been  rebellions  and  shootings 
and  agitations  of  a  vehement  and  exhaust- 
ing character  carried  continually  to  the 
point  of  lawlessness  before  Irish  grievances 
could  be  redressed.  A  form  of  govern- 
ment which  requires  a  succession  of  rebel- 
lions to  secure  reforms  afterwards  admit- 
ted to  be  reasonable  cannot  be  a  good  form 
of  government.  These  agitations  have  in- 
flicted grave  material  and  moral  injury  on 
Ireland.  The  instability  of  the  political 
system  has  prejudiced  natural  economic 
development.  Capital  will  not  be  invested 
in  industries  where  no  one  is  certain  about 
the  future.  And  because  the  will  of  the 
people  was  so  passionately  set  on  political 
freedom  an  atmosphere  of  suspicion  gath- 
ered around  public  movements  which  in 
other  countries  would  have  been  allowed  to 
carry  on  their  beneficent  work  unhindered 


134     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


by  any  party.  Here  they  were  continu- 
ally being  forced  to  declare  themselves 
either  for  or  agaimt  self-government.  The 
long  attack  on  the  movement  for  the  or- 
ganization of  Irish  agriculture  was  an  in- 
stance. Men  are  elected  on  public  bodies 
not  because  they  are  efficient  administra- 
tors, but  because  they  can  be  trusted  to 
pass  resolutions  favouring  one  party  or 
another.  This  has  led  to  corruption. 
Every  conceivable  rascality  in  Ireland  has 
hid  itself  behind  the  great  names  of  nation 
or  empire.  The  least  and  the  most  harm- 
less actions  of  men  engaged  in  philan- 
thropic or  educational  work  or  social  re- 
form are  scrutinized  and  criticized  so  as 
to  obstruct  good  work.  If  a  phrase  even 
suggests  the  possibility  of  a  political  par- 
tiality, or  tendency  to  anything  which 
might  be  construed  by  the  most  suspicious 
scrutineer  to  indicate  a  remote  desire  to 
use  the  work  done  as  an  argument  either 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  135 


for  or  against  self-government,  the  man 
or  movement  is  never  allowed  to  forget  it. 
Public  service  becomes  intolerable  and 
often  impossible  under  such  conditions, 
and  while  the  struggle  continues  this  also 
will  continue  to  the  moral  detriment  of  the 
people.  There  are  only  two  forms  of  gov- 
ernment possible.  A  people  may  either  be 
governed  by  force  or  may  govern  them- 
selves. The  dual  government  of  Ireland 
by  two  houses  of  Parliament,  one  in  Dub- 
lin and  one  in  London,  contemplated  in  the 
Home  Rule  Act  would  be  impossible  and 
irritating.  Whatever  may  be  said  for  two 
bodies,  each  with  its  spheres  of  influence 
clearly  defined,  there  is  nothing  to  be  said 
for  two  legislatures  with  concurrent  pow- 
ers of  legislation  and  taxation,  and  with 
members  from  Ireland  retained  at  West- 
minster to  provide  some  kind  of  demo- 
cratic excuse  for  the  exercise  of  powers  of 
Irish  legislation  and  taxation  by  the  Par- 


138     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


liament  at  Westminster.  The  Irish  de- 
mand is  that  Great  Britain  shall  throw 
upon  our  shoulders  the  full  weight  of  re- 
sponsibility for  the  management  of  our 
own  affairs,  so  that  we  can  only  blame  our- 
selves and  our  political  guides  and  not 
Great  Britain  if  we  err  in  our  policies. 

17.  I  have  stated  what  I  believe  to  be 
sound  reasons  for  the  recognition  of  the 
justice  of  the  Irish  demand  by  Great  Brit- 
ain and  I  now  turn  to  Ulster,  and  ask  it 
whether  the  unstable  condition  of  things  in 
Ireland  does  not  affect  it  even  more  than 
Great  Britain.  If  it  persists  in  its  pres- 
ent attitude,  if  it  remains  out  of  a  self- 
governing  Ireland,  it  will  not  thereby  ex- 
empt itself  from  political,  social  and  eco- 
nomic trouble.  Ireland  will  regard  the  six 
Ulster  counties  as  the  French  have  re- 
garded Alsace-Lorraine,  whose  hopes  of  re- 
conquest  turned  Europe  into  an  armed 
camp,  with  the  endless  suspicions,  secret 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  137 

treaties,  military  and  naval  developments, 
the  expense  of  maintaining  huge  armies, 
and  finally  the  inevitable  war.  So  sure  as 
Ulster  remains  out,  so  surely  will  it  become 
a  focus  for  nationalist  designs.  I  say 
nothing  of  the  injury  to  the  great  whole- 
sale business  carried  on  from  its  capital 
city  throughout  the  rest  of  Ireland  where 
the  inevitable  and  logical  answer  of  mer- 
chants in  the  rest  of  Ireland  to  requests 
for  orders  will  be :  "  You  would  die  rather 
than  live  in  the  same  political  house  with 
us.  We  will  die  rather  than  trade  with 
you.5'  There  will  be  lamentably  and  in- 
evitably a  fiercer  tone  between  North  and 
South.  Everything  which  happens  in  one 
quarter  will  be  distorted  in  the  other. 
Each  will  lie  about  the  other.  The  ma- 
terials will  exist  more  than  before  for  civil 
commotion,  and  this  will  be  aided  by  the 
powerful  minority  of  Nationalists  in  the 
excluded  counties  working  in  conjunction 


138     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


with  their  allies  across  the  border.  Noth- 
ing was  ever  gained  in  life  by  hatred; 
nothing  good  ever  came  of  it  or  could 
come  of  it ;  and  the  first  and  most  impor- 
tant of  all  the  commandments  of  the  spirit 
that  there  should  be  brotherhood  between 
men  will  be  deliberately  broken  to  the  ruin 
of  the  spiritual  life  of  Ireland. 

18.  So  far  from  Irish  Nationalists  wish- 
ing to  oppress  Ulster,  I  believe  that  there 
is  hardly  any  demand  which  could  be  made, 
even  involving  democratic  injustice  to 
themselves,  which  would  not  willingly  be 
granted  if  their  Ulster  compatriots  would 
fling  their  lot  in  with  the  rest  of  Ireland 
and  heal  the  eternal  sore.  I  ask  Ulster 
what  is  there  that  they  could  not  do  as 
efficiently  in  an  Ireland  with  the  status  and 
economic  power  of  a  self-governing  domin- 
ion as  they  do  at  present  ?  Could  they  not 
build  their  ships  and  sell  them,  manufac- 
ture and  export  their  linens?    What  do 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  139 

they  mean  when  they  say  Ulster  industries 
would  be  taxed?  I  cannot  imagine  any 
Irish  taxation  which  their  wildest  dreams 
imagined  so  heavy  as  the  taxation  which 
they  will  endure  as  part  of  the  United 
Kingdom  in  future.  They  will  be  impli- 
cated in  all  the  revolutionary  legislation 
made  inevitable  in  Great  Britain  by  the  re- 
coil on  society  of  the  munition  workers  and 
disbanded  conscripts.  Ireland,  which 
luckily  for  itself,  has  the  majority  of  its 
population  economically  independent  as 
workers  on  the  land,  and  which,  in  the  de- 
velopment of  agriculture  now  made  nec- 
essary as  a  result  of  changes  in  naval  war- 
fare, will  be  able  to  absorb  without  much 
trouble  its  returning  workers,  Ireland  will 
be  much  quieter,  less  revolutionary  and 
less  expensive  to  govern.  I  ask  what  rea- 
son is  there  to  suppose  that  taxation  in  a 
self-governing  Ireland  would  be  greater 
than  in  Great  Britain  after  the  war,  or  in 


140     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


what  way  Ulster  industries  could  be  sin- 
gled out,  or  for  what  evil  purpose  by  an 
Irish  Parliament?  It  would  be  only  too 
anxious  rather  to  develop  still  further  the 
one  great  industrial  centre  in  Ireland ;  and 
would,  it  is  my  firm  conviction,  allow  the 
representatives  of  Ulster  practically  to 
dictate  the  industrial  policy  of  Ireland. 
Has  there  ever  at  any  time  been  the 
slightest  opposition  by  any  Irish  Nation- 
alist to  proposals  made  by  Ulster  indus- 
trialists which  would  lend  colour  to  such  a 
suspicion?  Personally,  I  think  that  Ul- 
ster without  safeguards  of  any  kind  might 
trust  its  fellow-countrymen ;  the  weight, 
the  intelligence,  the  vigour  of  character 
of  Ulster  people  in  any  case  would  enable 
them  to  dominate  Ireland  economically. 

19.  But  I  do  not  for  a  moment  say  that 
Ulster  is  not  justified  in  demanding  safe- 
guards. Its  leader,  speaking  at  West- 
minster during  one  of  the  debates  on  the 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  141 


Home  Rule  Bill,  said  scornfully,  "  We  do 
not  fear  oppressive  legislation.  We  know 
in  fact  there  would  be  none.  What  we  do 
fear  is  oppressive  administration."  That 
I  translate  to  mean  that  Ulster  fears  that 
the  policy  of  the  spoils  to  the  victors  would 
be  adopted,  and  that  jobbery  in  Nation- 
alist and  Catholic  interests  would  be  ram- 
pant. There  are  as  many  honest  Nation- 
alists and  Catholics  who  would  object  to 
this  as  there  are  Protestant  Unionists,  and 
they  would  readily  accept  as  part  of  any 
settlement  the  proposal  that  all  posts 
which  can  rightly  be  filled  by  competitive 
examination  shall  only  be  filled  after  ex- 
amination by  Irish  Civil  Service  Commis- 
sioners, and  that  this  should  include  all 
posts  paid  for  out  of  public  funds  whether 
directly  under  the  Irish  Government  or 
under  County  Councils,  Urban  Councils, 
Corporations,  or  Boards  of  Guardians. 
Further,  they  would  allow  the  Ulster 


142    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


Counties  through  their  members  a  veto  on 
any  important  administrative  position 
where  the  area  of  the  official's  operation 
was  largely  confined  to  North-East  Ul- 
ster, if  such  posts  were  of  a  character 
which  could  not  rightly  be  filled  after  ex- 
amination and  must  needs  be  a  government 
appointment.  I  have  heard  the  suspicion 
expressed  that  Gaelic  might  be  made  a  sub- 
ject compulsory  on  all  candidates,  and 
that  this  would  prejudice  the  chances  of 
Ulster  candidates  desirous  of  entering  the 
Civil  Service.  Nationalist  opinion  would 
readily  agree  that,  if  marks  were  given  for 
Gaelic,  an  alternative  language,  such  as 
French  or  German,  should  be  allowed  the 
candidate  as  a  matter  of  choice  and  the 
marks  given  be  of  equal  value.  By  such 
concession  jobbery  would  be  made  impos- 
sible. The  corruption  and  bribery  now 
prevalent  in  local  government  would  be  a 
thing  of  the  past.    Nationalists  and  Un- 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  148 

ionists  alike  would  be  assured  of  honest 
administration  and  that  merit  and  effi- 
ciency, not  membership  of  some  sectarian 
or  political  association,  would  lead  to  pub- 
lic service. 

20.  If  that  would  not  be  regarded  as 
adequate  protection,  Nationalists  are 
ready  to  consider  with  friendly  minds  any 
other  safeguards  proposed  either  by  Ul- 
ster or  Southern  Unionists,  though  in  my 
opinion  the  less  there  are  formal  and  legal 
acknowledgments  of  differences  the  better, 
for  it  is  desirable  that  Protestant  and 
Catholic,  Unionist  and  Nationalist,  should 
meet  and  redivide  along  other  lines  than 
those  of  religion  or  past  party  politics, 
and  it  is  obvious  that  the  raising  of  artifi- 
cial barriers  might  perpetuate  the  present 
lines  of  division.  A  real  settlement  is  im- 
possible without  the  inclusion  of  the  whole 
province  in  the  Irish  State,  and  apart  from 
the  passionate  sentiment  existing  in  Na- 


144    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


tionalist  Ireland  for  the  unity  of  the  whole 
country  there  are  strong  economic  bonds 
between  Ulster  and  the  three  provinces. 
Further,  the  exclusion  of  all  or  a  large 
part  of  Ulster  would  make  the  excluded 
part  too  predominantly  industrial  and  the 
rest  of  Ireland  too  exclusively  agricul- 
tural, tending  to  prevent  that  right  bal- 
ance between  rural  and  urban  industry 
which  all  nations  should  aim  at  and  which 
makes  for  a  varied  intellectual  life,  social 
and  political  wisdom  and  a  healthy  na- 
tional being.  Though  for  the  sake  of 
obliteration  of  past  differences  I  would 
prefer  as  little  building  by  legislation  of 
fences  isolating  one  section  of  the  commu- 
nity from  another,  still  I  am  certain  that 
if  Ulster,  as  the  price  of  coming  into  a  self- 
governing  Ireland,  demanded  some  appli- 
cation of  the  Swiss  Cantonal  system  to  it- 
self which  would  give  it  control  over  local 
administration,  it  could  have  it ;  or,  again 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  145 


it  could  be  conceded  the  powers  of  local 
control  vested  in  the  provincial  govern- 
ments in  Canada,  where  the  provincial  as- 
semblies have  exclusive  power  to  legislate 
for  themselves  in  respect  of  local  works, 
municipal  institutions,  licences,  and  ad- 
ministration of  justice  in  the  province. 
Further,  subject  to  certain  provisions  pro- 
tecting the  interests  of  different  religious 
bodies,  the  provincial  assemblies  have  the 
exclusive  power  to  make  laws  upon  educa- 
tion. Would  not  this  give  Ulster  all  the 
guarantees  for  civil  and  religious  liberty  it 
requires?  What  arguments  of  theirs, 
what  fears  have  they  expressed,  which 
would  not  be  met  by  such  control  over 
local  administration?  I  would  prefer 
that  the  mind  of  Ulster  should  argue  its 
points  with  the  whole  of  Ireland  and  press 
its  ideals  upon  it  without  reservation  of 
its  wisdom  for  itself.  But  doubtless  if 
Ulster  accepted  this  proposal  it  would 


146     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

benefit  the  rest  of  Ireland  by  the  model  it 
would  set  of  efficient  administration:  and 
it  would,  I  have  no  doubt,  insert  in  its 
Provincial  constitution  all  the  safeguards 
for  minorities  there  which  they  would  ask 
should  be  inserted  in  any  Irish  constitu- 
tion to  protect  the  interest  of  their  co- 
religionists in  that  part  of  Ireland  where 
they  are  in  a  minority. 

21.  I  can  deal  only  with  fundamentals 
in  this  memorandum  because  it  is  upon 
fundamentals  there  are  differences  of 
thinking.  Once  these  are  settled,  it  would 
be  comparatively  easy  to  devise  the  neces- 
sary clauses  in  an  Irish  constitution,  giv- 
ing safeguards  to  England  for  the  due 
payment  of  the  advances  under  the  Land 
Acts,  and  the  principles  upon  which  an 
Irish  contribution  should  be  made  to  the 
empire  for  naval  and  military  purposes. 
It  was  suggested  by  Mr.  Lionel  Curtis  in 
his  Problems  of  the  Commonwealth,  that 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  147 

assessors  might  be  appointed  by  the  do- 
minions to  fix  the  fair  taxable  capacity 
of  each  for  this  purpose.  It  will  be  ob- 
served that  while  I  have  claimed  for  Ire- 
land the  status  of  a  dominion,  I  have  re- 
ferred solely  hitherto  to  the  powers  of 
control  over  trade  policy,  customs,  excise, 
taxation  and  legislation  possessed  by  the 
dominions,  and  have  not  claimed  for  Ire- 
land the  right  to  have  an  army  or  a  navy 
of  its  own.  I  recognize  that  the  proxim- 
ity of  the  two  islands  makes  it  desirable 
to  consolidate  the  naval  power  under  the 
control  of  the  Admiralty.  The  regular 
army  should  remain  in  the  same  way  un- 
der the  War  Office  which  would  have  the 
power  of  recruiting  in  Ireland.  The  Irish 
Parliament  would,  I  have  no  doubt,  be  will- 
ing to  raise  at  its  own  expense  under  an 
Irish  Territorial  Council  a  territorial 
force  similar  to  that  of  England  but  not 
removable  from  Ireland.    Military  con- 


148     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


scription  could  never  be  permitted  except 
by  act  of  the  Irish  Parliament.  It  would 
be  a  denial  of  the  first  principle  of  na- 
tionality if  the  power  of  conscripting  the 
citizens  of  the  country  lay  not  in  the  hands 
of  the  National  Parliament  but  was  exer- 
cised by  another  nation. 

22.  While  a  self-governing  Ireland 
would  contribute  money  to  the  defence  of 
the  federated  empire,  it  would  not  be 
content  that  that  money  should  be  spent 
on  dockyards,  arsenals,  camps,  har- 
bours, naval  stations,  ship-building  and 
supplies  in  Great  Britain  to  the  almost 
complete  neglect  of  Ireland  as  at  present. 
A  large  contribution  for  such  purposes 
spent  outside  Ireland  would  be  an  eco- 
nomic drain  if  not  balanced  by  counter  ex- 
penditure here.  This  might  be  effected  by 
the  training  of  a  portion  of  the  navy  and 
army  and  the  Irish  regiments  of  the  regu- 
lar army  in  Ireland  and  their  equipment, 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  149 


clothing,  supplies,  munitions  and  rations, 
being  obtained  through  an  Irish  depart- 
ment. Naval  dockyards  should  be  con- 
structed here  and  a  proportion  of  ships 
built  in  them.  Just  as  surely  as  there 
must  be  a  balance  between  the  imports  and 
exports  of  a  country,  so  must  there  be  & 
balance  between  the  revenue  raised  in  a 
nation  and  the  public  expenditure  on  that 
nation.  Irish  economic  depression  after 
the  Act  of  Union  was  due  in  large  meas- 
ure to  absentee  landlordism  and  the  ex- 
penditure of  Irish  revenue  outside  Ireland 
with  no  proportionate  return.  This  must 
not  be  expected  to  continue  against  Irish 
interests.  Ireland,  granted  the  freedom  it 
desires,  would  be  willing  to  defend  its  free- 
dom and  the  freedom  of  other  dominions 
in  the  commonwealth  of  nations  it  belonged 
to,  but  it  is  not  willing  to  allow  millions  to 
be  raised  in  Ireland  and  spent  outside  Ire- 
land.   If  three  or  five  millions  are  raised 


150    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


in  Ireland  for  imperial  purposes  and  spent 
in  Great  Britain,  it  simply  means  that  the 
vast  employment  of  labour  necessitated 
takes  place  outside  Ireland:  whereas  if 
spent  here,  it  would  mean  the  employment 
of  many  thousands  of  men,  the  support  of 
their  families,  and  in  the  economic  chain 
would  follow  the  support  of  those  who 
cater  for  them  in  food,  clothing,  housing, 
etc.  Even  with  the  best  will  in  the  world, 
to  do  its  share  towards  its  defence  of  the 
freedom  it  had  attained,  Ireland  could  not 
permit  such  an  economic  drain  on  its  re- 
sources. No  country  could  approve  of  a 
policy  which  in  its  application  means  the 
emigration  of  thousands  of  its  people 
every  year  while  it  continued. 

23.  I  believe  even  if  there  were  no  his- 
torical basis  for  Irish  nationalism  that 
such  claims  as  I  have  stated  would  have 
become  inevitable,  because  the  tendency  of 
humanity  as  it  develops  intellectually  and 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  151 


spiritually  is  to  desire  more  and  more  free- 
dom, and  to  substitute  more  and  more  an 
internal  law  for  external  law  or  gov- 
ernment, and  that  the  solidarity  of  empires 
or  nations  will  depend  not  so  much  upon 
the  close  texture  of  their  political  organi- 
zation or  the  uniformity  of  mind  so  en- 
gendered as  upon  the  freedom  allowed  and 
the  delight  people  feel  in  that  freedom. 
The  more  educated  a  man  is  the  more  it  is 
hateful  to  him  to  be  constrained  and  the 
more  impossible  does  it  become  for  central 
governments  to  provide  by  regulation  for 
the  infinite  variety  of  desires  and  cultural 
developments  which  spring  up  everywhere 
and  are  in  themselves  laudable,  and  in  no 
way  endanger  the  state.  A  recognition  of 
this  has  already  led  to  much  decentraliza- 
tion in  Great  Britain  itself.  And  if  the 
claim  for  more  power  in  the  administration 
of  local  affairs  was  so  strongly  felt  in  a 
homogeneous  country  like  Great  Britain 


152     Tlie  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


that,  through  its  county  council  system, 
people  in  districts  like  Kent  or  Essex  have 
been  permitted  control  over  education  and 
the  purchase  of  land,  and  the  distribu- 
tion of  it  to  small  holders,  how  much  more 
passionately  must  this  desire  for  self-con- 
trol be  felt  in  Ireland  where  people  have  a 
different  national  character  which  has  sur- 
vived all  the  educational  experiments  to 
change  them  into  the  likeness  of  their 
neighbours.  The  battle  which  is  going  on 
in  the  world  has  been  stated  to  be  a  spirit- 
ual conflict  between  those  who  desire 
greater  freedom  for  the  individual  and 
think  that  the  state  exists  to  preserve  that 
freedom,  and  those  who  believe  in  the  pre- 
dominance of  the  state  and  the  complete 
subjection  of  the  individual  to  it  and  the 
moulding  of  the  individual  mind  in  its  im- 
age. This  has  been  stated,  and  if  the  first 
view  is  a  declaration  of  ideals  sincerely 
held  by  Great  Britain,  it  would  mean  the 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  153 


granting  to  Ireland,  a  country  which  has 
expressed  its  wishes  by  vaster  majorities 
than  were  ever  polled  in  any  other  country 
for  political  changes,  the  satisfaction  of 
its  desires. 

24.  The  acceptance  of  the  proposals 
here  made  would  mean  sacrifices  for  the 
two  extremes  in  Ireland,  and  neither  party 
has  as  yet  made  any  real  sacrifice  to  meet 
the  other,  but  each  has  gone  on  its  own 
way.  I  urge  upon  them  that  if  the  sug- 
gestions made  here  were  accepted,  both 
would  obtain  substantially  what  they  de- 
sire, the  Ulster  Unionists,  that  safety  for 
their  interests  and  provision  for  Ireland's 
unity  with  the  commonwealth  of  do- 
minions inside  the  empire :  the  Nation- 
alists, that  power  they  desire  to  create 
an  Irish  civilization  by  self-devised  and 
self-checked  efforts.  The  brotherhood  of 
dominions  of  which  they  would  form  one 
would  be  inspired  as  much  by  the  fresh 


154     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


life  and  wide  democratic  outlook  of 
Australia,  New  Zealand,  South  Africa 
and  Canada,  as  by  the  hoarier  polit- 
ical wisdom  of  Great  Britain;  and  mili- 
tary, naval,  foreign  and  colonial  policy 
must  in  the  future  be  devised  by  the  rep- 
resentatives of  those  dominions  sitting  in 
council  together  with  the  representatives 
of  Great  Britain.  Does  not  that  indicate 
a  different  form  of  imperialism  from  that 
they  hold  in  no  friendly  memory?  It 
would  not  be  imperialism  in  the  ancient 
sense  but  a  federal  union  of  independent 
nations  to  protect  national  liberties,  which 
might  draw  into  its  union  other  peoples 
hitherto  unconnected  with  it,  and  so  beget 
a  league  of  nations  to  make  a  common  in- 
ternational law  prevail.  The  allegiance 
would  be  to  common  principles  which 
mankind  desire  and  would  not  permit 
the  dominance  of  any  one  race.  We 
have   not    only    to   be   good  Irishmen 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  155 

but  good  citizens  of  the  world,  and  one 
is  as  important  as  the  other,  for  earth 
is  more  and  more  forcing  on  its  children  a 
recognition  of  their  fundamental  unity, 
and  that  all  rise  and  fall  and  suffer  to- 
gether, and  that  none  can  escape  the  infec- 
tion from  their  common  humanity.  If 
these  ideas  emerge  from  the  world  conflict 
and  are  accepted  as  world  morality,  it  will 
be  some  compensation  for  the  anguish  of 
learning  the  lesson.  We  in  Ireland  like 
the  rest  of  the  world  must  rise  above  our- 
selves and  our  differences  if  we  are  to  man- 
ifest the  genius  which  is  in  us,  and  play  a 
noble  part  in  world  history. 


NOTE 


I  was  asked  to  put  into  shape  for  pub- 
lication ideas  and  suggestions  for  an  Irish 
settlement  which  had  been  discussed  among 
a  group  whose  members  represented  all  ex- 
tremes in  Irish  opinion.  The  compromise 
arrived  at  was  embodied  in  documents  writ- 
ten by  members  of  the  group  privately  cir- 
culated, criticized  and  again  amended.  I 
make  special  acknowledgments  to  Colonel 
Maurice  Moore,  Mr.  James  G.  Douglas, 
Mr.  Edward  E.  Lysaght,  Mr.  Joseph 
Johnston,  F.T.C.D.,  Mr.  Alec  Wilson  and 
Mr.  Diarmid  Coffey.  For  the  spirit, 
method  of  presentation  and  general  argu- 
ments used,  I  alone  am  responsible.  And 
if  any  are  offended  at  what  I  have  said,  I 
am  to  be  blamed,  not  my  fellow-workers. 

A.  E. 

156 


ADDENDUM 


This  pamphlet  is  a  reprint  of  articles 
which  appeared  in  the  Irish  Times  on  the 
26th,  28th  and  29th  of  May.  The  letters 
which  follow  appeared  in  the  same  paper  on 
the  3 1st  of  May. 

TO  THE  EDITOR  OF  THE  IRISH  TIMES 

Sir  —  In  an  attempt  to  discover  what 
measure  of  agreement  to-day  was  possible  be- 
tween the  political  antagonists  of  yesterday, 
the  attention  of  a  few  dozen  Irish  men  and 
women  was  drawn  to  the  articles  by  A.  E. 
which  have  appeared  in  your  columns,  and 
the  following  statement  was  signed  by  those 
whose  names  are  appended  beneath  it:  — 

"  We,    the    undersigned,    having  read 
Thoughts  for  a  Convention  by  A.  E.  with- 
out endorsing  all  his  statements,  express  our 
general  agreement  with  his  conclusions  and 
157 


158     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

with  the  argument  by  which  these  are 
reached." 

The  signatories  include :  — 

His  Grace  the  Most  Rev.  Dr.  Walsh,  Arch- 
bishop of  Dublin. 
The  Lord  Monteagle,  K.P. 
Sir  John  Griffith,  M.A.I.,  M.  Inst.  C.  E. 
Sir  Nugent  Everard. 
Sir  Algernon  Coote,  Bt. 
Sir  J.  R.  O'Connell,  LL.D. 
Sir  Henry  Grattan  Bellew,  Bt. 
Lady  Gregory. 
Mrs.  J.  R.  Green. 

Douglas  Hyde,  LL.D.,  D.Litt.,  Professor 

Irish  National  University. 
Edmund  Curtis,  M.A.,  Professor  Oratory, 

History  and  English  Literature,  Dublin 

University. 

T.  B.  Rudmose  Brown,  M.A.,  Professor  of 
Romance  Languages,  University  of  Dublin. 

Dermod  O'Brien,  President  Royal  Hibernian 
Academy. 

Thomas  E.  Gordon,  M.B.,  F.R.C.S.I. 

Oliver  Gogarty,  F.R.C.S.I. 

Joseph  T.  Wigham,  M.D. 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  159 


Frank  C.  Purser,  M.D. 
Robert  J.  Rowlette,  M.D. 
Edward  Martyn. 
George  Gavan  Duffy. 
F.  J.  O'Connor. 
John  Mackie,  F.C.A. 
John  O'Neill. 
John  McCann. 
J.  Hubbard  Clarke,  J.P. 
Thomas  Butler. 
John  Douglas. 
E.  A.  Stopford. 
James  MacNeill. 

Does  not  this  suggest  that  agreement  might 
also  be  possible  in  an  Irish  Convention  if,  by 
some  miracle,  Irishmen  of  various  parties 
would  step  out  of  their  well-fenced  enclosures 
to  take  counsel  in  common  ?  —  Yours,  etc., 
James  G.  Douglas. 


Dublin,  May  30th,  1917. 


160    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


TO  THE  EDITOR  OF  THE  IRISH  TIMES 

Sir  —  May  I  express  the  hope  that 
94  A.  E.'s  99  Thoughts  for  a  Convention,  the 
last  instalment  of  which  you  published  yes- 
terday, and  which  I  am  informed  will  reap- 
pear as  a  pamphlet  this  week,  will  be 
widely  read?  I  am  not  thinking  of  his  con- 
clusions, ably  reasoned  as  they  are,  but  of 
the  tone  and  temper  in  which  he  handles  the 
most  explosive  material  in  the  whole  maga- 
zine of  Irish  controversy.  It  is  refreshing 
to  listen  to  one  who  not  only  has  the  courage 
of  his  convictions,  but  can  also  say  honestly 
that  the  convictions  are  his  own  and  not  some- 
body else's. 

"  A.  E."  strikes  a  note  which  may  go  far 
to  make  the  Convention  the  success  the  vast 
majority  of  Irishmen  hardly  dare  to  hope 
that  it  will  be.  If  he  speaks  only  for  him- 
self, M  More  shame  for  his  generation  99  will 
surely  be  the  verdict  of  history. 

Yours,  etc., 

Horace  Plunkett. 

The  Plunkett  House,  Dublin, 
May  30th,  1917. 


A  DEFENCE  OF  THE  CONVENTION 

A  Speech  delivered  at  Dundalk 
June  25,  1917 

By  Sir  Horace  Plunkett 


"  Sinn  Fein,  Labour  and  Mr.  O'Brien's 
League  now  stand  out.  But  the  Bishops 
have  accepted  Mr.  Lloyd  George's  invitation, 
and  a  noble  and  statesmanlike  speech  by  Sir 
Horace  Plunkett  —  his  first  on  the  political 
platform  for  fifteen  years  —  in  favour  of  the 
Convention  should  have  an  effect." 

—  The  New  Statesman. 


A  DEFENCE  OF  THE  CONVENTION 


Mr.  Chairman,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen* 

THIS  is  the  first  time  in  over  fifteen 
years  that  I  have  stood  on  a  plat- 
form which  could  be  called  political,  and  I 
daresay  there  are  many  others  here  who 
leave  party  politics  severely  alone.  But 
to-day  Ireland,  in  common  with  many  an- 
other country,  is  passing  through  a  crisis 
unprecedented  in  its  history,  and  the  call 
has  come  for  men  of  no  party  to  work  to- 
gether with  men  of  all  parties  in  the  field 
of  politics.  For,  whether  we  wish  it  or 
not,  changes  are  about  to  be  made  in  our 
system  of  government  which  must  pro- 
foundly affect  us  all.  These  changes  are 
to  be  discussed  in  a  National  Convention, 

which  the  leader  of  over  four-fifths  of  our 
163 


164     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


Parliamentary  representatives  has  himself 
declared  should  be  composed  mainly  of 
non-partisan  Irishmen.  To  these  latter, 
therefore,  I  desire  chiefly  to  speak,  as  one 
of  them,  upon  our  political  duty  at  this 
time. 

THE  CONVENTION  AND  ITS  CRITICS 

A  great  majority  of  the  Irish  people 
have  already  decided  that  an  attempt 
should  be  made  at  once  in  Ireland  by  Irish- 
men to  come  to  some  agreement,  and  have 
welcomed  the  plan  offered  for  our  accept- 
ance by  the  Government.  But  voices  are 
heard  denying  that  the  Convention  gives 
us  any  real  opportunity  of  attaining  the 
end  in  view.  So  strongly  is  this  felt  that 
a  body  of  opinion,  of  unknown  numerical 
strength  but  of  unquestioned  sincerity 
and  of  great  determination,  is  urging 
upon  us  a  wholly  different  plan.  Ireland 
is  to  appear  before  the  Peace  Conference 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  165 

and  to  demand  that  her  government  shall 
be  brought  into  accord  with  the  principles 
for  which  the  Allies  profess  to  be  fighting. 
These  men  who  reject,  and  others  who 
accept,  the  Convention  make  two  objec- 
tions to  it:  they  say,  first,  that  it  is  not 
in  any  true  sense  representative,  and  sec- 
ondly, that  it  has  no  power  to  get  legisla- 
tive effect  given  to  its  decision,  no  matter 
by  how  large  a  majority  its  wishes  may  be 
declared.  The  best  contribution  I  can 
make  to  your  deliberations  will  be  to  ex- 
amine, briefly,  the  alternative  which  has 
been  suggested,  to  answer,  as  far  as  I  can, 
the  two  damaging  criticisms  of  the  Con- 
vention itself,  and  then  to  give  my  reason 
for  holding  that  we  should  accept  the  offer 
of  the  Government. 

IRELAND  AT  THE  PEACE  CONFERENCE 

It  would  not  be  fair  to  criticize  the 
Peace  Conference  proposal  in  its  details, 


166     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


because  the  time  has  not  come  to  work 
these  out ;  but  it  is  quite  necessary  to  dis- 
cuss the  plan  in  its  broad  outlines,  since 
it  is  advocated  as  a  better  way  than  that 
which  most  of  us  wish  to  take.  I  submit, 
then,  that  if  the  Conference  were  to  meet 
to-morrow,  Ireland  could  not  be  repre- 
sented at  it,  for  the  obvious  reason  that 
there  would  be  no  agreement  as  to  who 
were  to  be  her  plenipotentiaries.  But,  if 
this  difficulty  were  surmounted  —  and  in 
an  atmosphere  which  makes  it  almost  im- 
possible to  find  an  Irish  Chairman  for  our 
Convention  it  is  a  big  "  if  99 —  what  is  it 
that  our  plenipotentiaries  are  going  to  ask 
of  the  assembled  representatives  of  the 
war-worn  nations?  They  will  have  to  ad- 
mit that  the  people  of  Ireland  are  not 
unanimous  as  to  the  kind  of  government 
they  require.  Some  prefer  the  status  quo; 
others  desire  devolution  within  the  United 
Kingdom;  a  much  larger  section  favour 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  167 


government  within  the  British  Common- 
wealth of  self-governing  nations,  but  dif- 
fer considerably  as  to  the  precise  position 
Ireland  should  occupy  in  it;  and  yet  an- 
other group  desire  to  make  their  country 
an  independent  sovereign  State.  Worse 
still,  there  is  the  Ulster  difficulty,  which 
three  short  years  ago  brought  us  to  the 
verge  of  civil  war.  What,  again,  I  ask, 
would  our  plenipotentiaries  at  the  peace 
conference  propose,  assuming  —  and  it  is 
a  large  assumption  —  that  the  Conference 
admitted  them  to  its  councils  and  did  not 
tell  them  to  try  first  a  conference  at 
home?  Is  it  likely  that  the  representa- 
tives of  the  nations,  having  to  discover  the 
means  to  be  taken  to  prevent  further 
attempts  to  disturb  the  world's  peace  and 
the  practicable  limitations  of  militarism 
and  navalism,  having  to  decide  vast  ques- 
tions of  restitution  and  reparation,  hav- 
ing to  allay  the  fiercest  racial  antagonisms 


168    Th*  Irish  Rome-Rule  Convention 


of  the  Near  East  —  to  mention  but  a  few 
of  their  problems  —  will  welcome  the  task 
of  settling  the  Irish  question  not  only  in 
its  old  and  well-understood  Anglo-Irish 
significance,  but  in  its  later  development 
of  Irish  disagreement?  How  many  minor- 
ities is  a  peace  conference  to  be  asked  to 
coerce,  to  say  nothing  of  the  coercion  of 
Great  Britain  which  any  settlement  agree- 
able to  the  advocates  of  this  plan  would 
involve?  I  cannot  help  feeling  that  this 
method  of  settlement,  which,  no  doubt,  will 
appeal  to  the  imagination  and  stir  the 
pride  of  many  Irishmen,  would  provoke 
more  violent  opposition  than  any  that  has 
yet  been  proposed.  So  let  us  turn  to  the 
Convention,  and  see  whether  that  bird  in 
the  hand  does  not  offer  a  better  solution 
than  this  doubtful  bird  in  a  distant  bush. 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  169 


THE  ALLEGED  UN  REPRESENTATIVE  CHARAC- 
TER  OF   THE  CONVENTION 

I  come  now  to  the  main  criticism  of  the 
Convention  —  its  constitution.  It  is  not 
ideally  representative  —  that  may  be  ad- 
mitted at  once.  It  is  widely  felt  that  the 
only  satisfactory  plan  would  be  to  let  the 
democracy  choose  its  delegates  as  it 
chooses  its  Parliamentary  representatives. 
But  there  are  several  objections  to  any 
popular  election  just  now.  The  Parlia- 
mentary register  is  out  of  date,  and  it 
would  take  a  long  time  to  revise  it.  The 
country  is  in  a  state  of  considerable  un- 
rest, which  we  all  hope  the  Convention  will 
allay.  In  the  circumstances,  if  we  were 
to  have  a  hundred  fights  over  the  selection 
of  the  delegates,  the  birthpangs  of  the 
Convention  might  be  fatal  to  the  spirit 
in  which  it  can  alone  succeed.  There  is 
a  very  strongly  felt  objection  to  having 


170     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


any  election  while  a  large  number  of  Irish- 
men are  fighting  abroad.  No  body  of  citi- 
zens has  a  better  right  to  be  heard  than 
those  soldiers,  who,  apart  from  other 
claims,  are  very  likely  to  have  gained  some 
wide  points  of  view.  I  fully  realize  that 
the  Sinn  Fein  group  have  a  grievance  in 
the  large  representation  of  local  govern- 
ment bodies  elected  before  they  gained 
their  present  numerical  strength ;  but  it  is 
notorious  that  the  great  bulk  of  that  party 
— •  which  rose  phoenix-like  out  of  the  ashes 
of  the  rebellion  —  consists  of  recent  con- 
verts. Has  their  doctrine  failed  to  com- 
mend itself  td  a  full  proportion  of  the 
chairman  of  county  and  county-borough 
councils  and  to  the  urban  district  nominees 
who  will  be  delegates  under  the  Govern- 
ment's plan  ?  Theirs  is  not  the  only  griev- 
ance. The  Nationalists  in  the  six  Ulster 
counties  claiming  exclusion  are  also  un- 
represented, and  other  bodies  make  similar 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  171 


complaints.  Of  all  these  I  would  ask: 
does  the  basis  of  representation  very  much 
matter?  Surely  the  equal  balance  of  par- 
ties is  far  less  important  than  a  com- 
prehensive representation  of  Irish  inter- 
ests, and  this  is  more  easily  reached  by 
nomination  than  by  election.  As  the  Con- 
vention, which,  as  many  have  pointed  out, 
would  be  more  properly  called  a  Confer- 
ence, is  constituted,  every  considerable  sec- 
tion of  Irishmen  should  find  in  it  some  com- 
petent advocate  of  its  views.  One  essen- 
tial point  is  that,  if  the  Convention  agrees 
upon  a  scheme  which  does  not  clearly  meet 
with  popular  favour,  it  will  unquestion- 
ably be  submitted  by  referendum  or  other- 
wise for  popular  approval.  Lastly,  con- 
sider the  constructive  work  the  Conven- 
tion has  to  do.  While  every  delegate  will 
be  competent  to  criticize  its  report,  those 
who  will  have  the  necessary  special  knowl- 
edge for  drafting  a  bill  will  be  exceeding 


172     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


few.  One  Alexander  Hamilton  would  do 
the  whole  job.  No  one  who  knows  the  way 
such  work  has  to  be  done  would  be  sur- 
prised either  by  a  good  report  from  a  bad 
Convention  or  a  bad  report  from  a  good 
Convention. 

THE  CASE  FOR  AH  ALL-IRELAND  SUPPORT 

The  conclusion,  then,  that  I  reach  is 
that,  in  times  of  great  difficulty,  the  Gov- 
ernment have  made  an  honest  attempt  to 
enable  us  to  settle  the  political  question 
for  ourselves.  They  have  striven  to  bring 
together  a  body  of  Irishmen  sufficiently 
representing  the  main  currents  of  Irish 
opinion  to  bespeak  favourable  considera- 
tion for  decisions  as  to  which  they  are 
unanimous,  and  to  make  a  strong  case  for 
those  at  which  they  arrive  by  a  substantial 
majority.  It  has  been  suggested,  I  know, 
that  it  is  nothing  more  than  a  clever  trick 
to  put  Ireland  in  the  wrong  by  proving 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  173 

to  the  world  that,  in  the  words  of  Lord 
Dufferin's  joke  at  our  expense,  "  the  Irish 
don't  know  what  they  want,  and  won't  be 
happy  till  they  get  it."  The  suggestion 
comes  from  those  who  foster  that  undying 
hatred  of  England  which,  if  it  does  not 
exclude,  most  assuredly  renders  barren 
their  love  for  Ireland.  To  such  I  would 
say  the  England  of  the  war  is  wholly  un- 
like any  England  that  has  ever  been  —  as 
unlike  as  is  the  Lloyd  George  Government 
from  any  of  its  predecessors.  It  is  domi- 
nated by  labour.  Little  time  has  the  Brit- 
ish democracy  just  now  to  think  of  Ire- 
land, but  I  am  convinced  it  wants  to  do 
justly  by  Ireland  for  its  own  sake,  for 
Ireland's  sake,  and  out  of  regard  to  the 
opinion  of  its  Allies,  especially  America 
and  Russia.  But,  if  this  view  cannot  be 
taken  by  those  I  am  now  addressing,  I  have 
another  answer.  If  they  really  think 
England  is  an  insidious  foe,  seeking  our  de- 


174     Tlie  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


struction,  why,  in  the  name  of  common 
sense,  should  they  fall  into  the  trap  which 
they  plainly  see  when,  by  simply  taking 
counsel  together,  the  Irish  have  it  in  their 
power  to  hoist  the  enemy  with  his  own 
petard?  What,  however,  concerns  us 
here  is  that  the  Convention  will  meet,  and 
we  wish  it  Godspeed.  Far  the  best  serv- 
ice this  meeting  can  do  is  to  appeal  to 
those  Irishmen  who  have  determined  to  re- 
main aloof  to  reconsider  their  decision. 

AX  APPEAL  TO  THOSE  WHO  HAVE  REFUSED 
CO-OPERATION 

To  those  of  our  countrymen  upon  whose 
willingness  to  make  some  sacrifice  of  in- 
dividual opinions,  the  full  success  of  the 
Convention  will  depend,  I  beg  leave  to  ad- 
dress a  few  friendly  words.  Of  all  the 
abstentions,  that  of  Mr.  William  O'Brien 
is  to  me  the  most  pathetic.  When  I  ac- 
cepted the  invitation  to  come  here  to-day 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  175 


and  plead  for  unity,  I  had  hoped  that  his 
mantle  would  fall  upon  me,  but  never 
dreamed  that  he  would  himself  cast  it  off. 
Xo  man  has  more  consistently  stood  for 
the  coming  together  of  Irishmen  to  try 
and  compose  their  differences,  and  at  least. 
I  looked  to  him  to  tell  us  to  make  the  best 
of  a  bad  Convention.  I  can  well  believe  in 
the  M  poignant  personal  sorrow "  with 
which  he  made  his  great  refusal,  and  I 
hope  he  will  see  in  this  meeting  a  direct  ap- 
peal to  him  to  reconsider  it.  He  will 
thus  render  the  greatest  service  of  a  life 
devoted  to  Ireland. 

The  abstention  of  the  Sinn  Feiners  is,  in 
a  sense,  more  regrettable,  because  they  are 
more  numerous.  In  some  respects,  theirs 
is  the  most  interesting  political  party  in 
Irish  history.  Most  other  parties  depend 
for  their  strength  upon  organisation,  and 
this  is  the  weakness  of  Sinn  Fein.  Its 
strength  is  in  its  idealism,  the  central  idea 


176    The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


being  the  concentration  of  all  Irish 
thought  and  action  upon  exclusively  Irish 
service.  That  idea,  in  some  of  its  impli- 
cations, leads,  unhappily,  to  extreme 
courses,  but  none  will  question  the  nobility 
of  an  aspiration  for  which  many  fine  young 
Irishmen  have  laid  down  their  lives.  But 
around  this  central  idea  seethes  every  kind 
of  discontent,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  the 
one  thing  the  cool-headed  leaders  should 
see  their  party  requires  at  the  moment  — 
indeed,  the  condition  precedent  of  the  real- 
ization of  any  of  its  aims  —  is  to  find 
its  place  in  the  national  life.  This  can 
only  be  done  by  meeting  face  to  face,  un- 
der conditions  favourable  to  frank  dis- 
cussion, every  section  of  the  community 
to  which,  in  common  with  every  other  po- 
litical party,  it  aspires  to  commend  its 
policy.  They,  I  should  have  thought, 
would  see  that  the  one  gleam  of  hope 
which  has  in  modern  times  brightened  the 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  177 

political  prospect  in  Ireland  is  the  recog- 
nition by  England  that  the  settlement  of 
the  Irish  question  must  come  from  Ire- 
land —  from  ourselves  alone.  They,  of 
all  Irishmen,  should  not  lightly  reject  a 
Convention  which,  whatever  its  defects,  has 
at  least  the  merit  of  being  Irish. 

I  regret,  too,  more  than  I  can  say,  the 
abstention  of  labour.  Irish  policies,  ow- 
ing, no  doubt,  to  the  domination  of  the 
land  question,  have  notably  disregarded 
the  workers  of  both  town  and  country.  In 
a  constitutional  Convention  the  voice  of 
those  who  toil  and  spin,  .must  be  heard. 
Three  capable  and  authorized  spokesmen 
would  do  as  well  as  a  hundred.  All  that 
is  wanted  is  that  a  watching  brief  should 
be  held  for  labour. 


178     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Contention 


Ireland's  difficulty,  ulster's 
opportunity 

Strange  as  it  may  seem,  the  solvent  for 
all  these  discords  lies  just  across  the  bor- 
ders to  the  North.  So  here,  North  of  the 
Boyne,  and  in  sight  of  the  Ulster  hills,  may 
we  not  appeal  to  those  Unionists  who  have 
earned  our  respect  by  agreeing  to  meet 
us,  to  help  the  cause  of  peace  and  good- 
will in  Ireland  by  listening  with  an  open 
mind  to  any  fresh  arguments  which  may 
be  offered  to  them  on  this  first  opportu- 
nity for  a  free  and  unfettered  inter- 
change of  view  upon  the  Irish  question? 
Their  position  in  Ireland  is  to  the  foreign 
observer  the  most  anomalous.  On  the 
one  hand,  they  appear  as  a  minority 
claiming  to  dictate  to  the  majority.  I 
dismiss  that  charge.  They  do  not  want 
to  interfere  with  us.  They  have  their  own 
version  of  Sinn  Fein  —  they,  too,  want  to 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  179 


be  left  to  themselves  alone.  On  the  other 
hand,  they  claim,  and  they  rightly  claim, 
that  they  have  to  their  credit  certain  solid 
achievements,  the  result  of  certain  solid 
qualities.  There  is  not  a  thinking  Irish- 
man but  admits  the  achievements  and  re- 
gards the  qualities  as  absolutely  indispen- 
sable to  any  prosperous  and  progressive 
Ireland  in  the  future.  But  of  all  the  mis- 
understandings which  curse  our  unhappy 
country,  the  worst  is  the  conviction  among 
these  Ulstermen  that  we  of  the  South  and 
West  bear  them  no  good  will,  and  that  we 
so  little  understand  their  industrial  and 
commercial  activities,  that,  even  with  the 
best  intentions  in  the  world,  we  should  in- 
evitably embark  upon  schemes  of  legisla- 
tion and  practise  methods  of  administra- 
tion fatal  to  their  interests.  Personally,  I 
think  we  have  neglected  the  duty  of  trying 
to  allay  —  much  that  we  have  done  has 
tended  to  confirm  —  these  fears. 


180     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 

For  this  reason,  when  the  Ulster  crisis 
was  most  acute,  I  elaborated  a  plan  for 
the  temporary  inclusion  of  Ulster  in  an 
all-Ireland  government  for  an  experi- 
mental period,  with  the  right  guaranteed 
by  all  parties  to  withdraw  if,  after  a  fair 
trial,  the  plan  did  not  work,  or  at  any 
time,  if  a  competent  impartial  tribunal  de- 
cided that  serious  harm  was  being  done 
to  Ulster  interests.  I  thought  it  mod 
auspicious  that  Nationalist  Ireland  seeim  d 
willing  to  accept  the  compromise,  and  that 
fact  makes  me  believe  that  Ulster  Union- 
ists will  be  astonished  at  the  reception 
they  will  get  in  the  Convention.  There 
they  will  find  an  honest  and  unanimous 
desire  not  to  coerce,  but  to  win,  them. 
All  the  alternative  schemes  for  the  future 
government  of  Ireland  will  be  discussed  in 
turn,  and  discussed  in  their  severely  prac- 
tical, as  well  as  in  their  sentimental,  as- 
pects.   Unless  I  am  greatly  mistaken,  par- 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  181 

tition  in  the  last  analysis  may  prove  to 
be  administratively  and  financially  as  dis- 
tasteful to  the  North-East  as  it  is  for 
other  reasons  to  the  rest  of  Ireland.  And 
in  the  course  of  these  practical  discussions 
I  confidently  believe  that  a  better  under- 
standing of  the  South  by  the  North  will 
inevitably  result.  It  will  be  seen  that  our 
hearts  and  minds  are  shown  at  their  worst 
in  a  public  life  dominated  by  the  grievance 
of  its  unsettled  Question.  Other  men  and 
other  methods  will  prevail  in  a  self-govern- 
ing Ireland  if  only  Ulster  will  play  its 
part. 

The  real  feeling  of  Southern  Ireland  to 
the  Northern  Province  is  well  expressed 
in  the  words  of  a  song  which  I  remember 
was  very  popular  some  forty  years  ago, 
called  "  Strangers  Yet."  Two  whom  God 
had  joined  together  were  unnaturally  kept 
apart.    One  asks: 


182     The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention 


"  Must  it  ever  more  be  thus  — 
Spirits  still  impervious? 
Can  we  never  fairly  stand 
Soul  to  soul,  as  hand  in  hand? 
Are  the  bounds  eternal  set 
To  retain  us  strangers  yet?  " 

If  at  the  Convention  Ulster  answers 
these  questions  as  the  whole  world  hopes 
she  will,  she  will  have  saved  the  country  at 
a  critical  moment,  and  done  herself  lasting 
honour  which  Ireland  will  never  forget. 
The  Unionists  in  three  predominantly  Na- 
tionalist counties  of  Ulster  throughout  the 
South  and  West,  the  Nationalists  in  the 
six  Ulster  Unionist  counties,  and  to  my 
personal  knowledge,  the  people  of  the 
United  States,  would  all  be  relieved  of  not 
unwarranted  misgivings.  To  the  Sinn 
Feiners  a  shining  example  would  be  set, 
while  the  Nationalist  Party,  who,  at  any 
rate,  have  repudiated  the  idea  of  coercing 
Ulster,  would  feel  that  those  strong,  de- 


The  Irish  Home-Rule  Convention  183 

termined  men  had  bent  down  to  place  a 
wreath  on  the  grave  of  Willie  Redmond, 
who  went  over  the  top  with  a  United  Ire- 
land as  his  heart's  desire. 


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To  the  writing  of  The  Rural  Life  Problem  of  the 
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Horace  Plunkett,  brings  an  unique  experience.  He  spent 
ten  years  ranching  and  farming  in  this  country,  and  has 
been  throughout  his  life  a  close  student  of  rural  life 
here,  especially  in  connection  with  the  Federal  State 
Department  activities  for  agricultural  development. 
Twenty  years  of  his  life  he  devoted  to  agricultural  or- 
ganization in  his  native  Ireland.  For  eight  of  these 
years  he  was  in  Parliament  and  was  mainly  instrumental 
in  securing  the  creation  in  1000  of  the  Irish  Department 
of  Agriculture  and  Technical  Instruction. 

Sir  Horace  is  already  well  known  as  a  writer  upon 
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Rural  Life. 

The  following  extract  from  a  letter  written  by  ex« 
President  Roosevelt  to  James  Bryce,  the  British  Am- 
bassador, is  an  interesting  appreciation  of  Sir  Horace 
Plunkett's  thought  and  work:  "  We  Americans  owe 
much  to  Ireland  and  to  Plunkett  in  the  work  we  have 
been  trying  to  do  in  the  United  States,  and  before  I 
leave  the  Presidency  I  want  to  acknowledge  our  debt 
and  to  send  through  you  my  thanks  for  the  help  we  have 
had;  not  only  my  thanks,  but  the  thanks  of  every  man 
who  knows  what  has  been  done,  and  sees  the  need  and 
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The  Insurrection  in  Dublin 


By  JAMES  STEPHENS 

Author  of  "  The  Crock  of  Gold," 
M  The  Hill  of  Vision,"  etc. 

i2mo.t  $1.25 

These  passages  show  the  spirit  of  Mr.  Stephens's  book. 
Of  the  writing  of  the  book  itself  he  says: 

M  The  day  before  the  rising  was  Easter  Sunday,  and 
they  were  crying  joyfully  in  the  churches,  'Christ  has 
risen.'  On  the  following  day  they  were  saying  in  the 
streets,  '  Ireland  has  risen.'  The  luck  of  the  moment 
was  with  her.  The  auguries  were  good,  and,  notwith- 
standing all  that  has  succeeded,  I  do  not  believe  she 
must  take  to  the  earth  again,  nor  be  ever  again  buried. 
The  pages  hereafter  were  written  day  by  day  during  the 
Insurrection  that  followed  Holy  Week.  .  •  .  What  I 
have  written  is  no  more  than  a  statement  of  what  passed 
in  one  quarter  of  our  city,  and  a  gathering  together  of 
the  rumor  and  tension  which  for  nearly  two  weeks  had 
to  serve  the  Dublin  people  in  lieu  of  news.  It  had  to 
serve  many  Dublin  people  in  place  of  bread. 

"  To-day,  the  book  is  finished,  and,  so  far  as  Ireland 
is  immediately  concerned,  the  insurrection  is  over. 
Action  now  lies  with  England,  and  on  that  action  de- 
pends whether  the  Irish  Insurrection  is  over  or  only 
suppressed." 

"  There  is  no  bitterness  in  it,  but  it  is  the  sort  of  a 
story '  that  puts  a  lump  in  your  throat.  In  a  series  of 
little  pictures  Mr.  Stephens  makes  us  feel  the  humor 
and  the  piteousness  of  this  mad  uprising." — New  York 
Tribune. 

"  Mr.  Stephens  has  written  a  notable  book,  and  one 
that  will  take  its  place  as  history.  It  should  be  read." — 
The  Argonaut  (San  Francisco). 

"  It  is  a  model  of  restrained  emotion,  forming  an 
artistic  and  at  the  same  time  virile  picture  of  those  days." 
— •  Cleveland  Leader. 

"  The  poet  reveals  himself  as  he  does  not  even  in 
his  verse,  and  he  makes  us  share  his  unspeakable  sad- 
ness."—  New  York  Sun. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

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The  Celtic  Dawn 


By  LLOYD  R.  MORRIS 

Ill.t  izmo..  $1.50 

The  insurrection  in  Dublin  was  the  culmination  of  the 
period  of  Irisn  renascence.  Back  of  it  are  the  con- 
tributory forces  of  movements  in  literature,  in  the  drama, 
in  the  revival  of  the  Gaelic  language,  in  economic  and 
social  reform,  and  in  political  thought. 

Mr.  Morris  has  written  of  these  movements  as  they 
are  interrelated  and  collectively  working  toward  the  re- 
construction of  Irish  life  and  the  establishment  of  a  new 
social  synthesis.  The  main  part  of  his  book  is  a  study 
of  the  tremendous  literary  development  which  has  during 
the  last  generation  served  to  put  Ireland  in  her  high 
place  among  the  creative  factors  of  to-day's  intelligence. 
Yeats,  Russell,  Synge,  Moore  —  what  is  the  spirit  they 
have  been  expressing?  Mr.  Morris  in  The  Celtic  Daun 
builds  a  background  for  our  understanding  of  it. 

"  A  work  for  the  shelves  of  every  library  that  desires 
a  statement  of  the  latest  and  most  significant  movement 
in  English  literature." — New  York  Times. 

**  Perhaps  the  most  comprehensive  of  all  the  recent 
surveys  of  the  Irish  renascence." —  Dial. 

"  It  is  a  most  interesting  interpretation  of  the  Irish 
Renascence,  quite  the  most  persuasive  I've  read  in  a 
single  volume,  and  should  long  remain  the  ideal  intro- 
duction to  the  poets  and  dramatists  of  the  movement"— 
Extract  from  a  letter  by  William  Stanley  Braithwaite. 

TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

I.    The  Forces  at  Work. 
II.    Critical  Theories  of  the  Renascence. 

III.  Poetry  of  the  Renascence. 

IV.  The  Drama. 

V.    The  Novel,  Folk-Lore,  and  Other  Prose. 
VI.    Movements   for    Social   and   Economic  Reform, 
Home  Rule,  Sinn  Fein,  The  Irish  Volunteers, 
The  Rebellion  of  1916. 


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